Software engineers typically implement their projects by using stubs. In the context of the software development process that we are using, that means:
- You are ready to implement a stage of your iterative enhancement plan
- You have a UML class diagram for that stage
- You implement the:
- Class definition clauses (extends, implements)
- Public members (fields, constructors, and methods)
- Javadoc specifications
required by your class diagram for the given stage of your iterative enhancement plan,
BUT:
- You use empty bodies for the constructors and void methods
- You use trivial bodies for the non-void methods
- For example, return 99 for a method that returns an int
- For example, return null for a method that returns an object
Using stubs has several advantages:
- It lets you focus on what methods you need, not how to implement them
- It lets you focus on what those methods should accomplish, not how to implement them
- You accomplish this by writing the Javadoc as part of the stub
- It lets you get a substage that compiles successfully before turning to implementation
- It helps enforce specification (design) before implementation (coding)