Head First Software Development

Chapter 6. Version Control: Defensive development

When it comes to writing great software, Safety First! Writing great software isn’t easy...especially when you’ve got to make sure your code works, and make sure it keeps working. All it takes is one typo, one bad decision from a co-worker, one crashed hard drive, and suddenly all your work goes down the drain. But with version control, you can make sure your code is always safe in a code repository, you can undo mistakes, and you can make bug fixes—to new and old versions of your software.

You’ve got a new contract—BeatBox Pro

Congratulations—you’ve been getting rave reviews from iSwoon, and you’ve landed a new contract. You’ve been hired to add two new features to the legendary Head First Java BeatBox project. BeatBox is a multi-player drum machine that lets you send messages and drum loops to other users over the network.

Like every other software development project out there, the customer wants things done as soon as possible. They even let you bring along Bob, one of your junior developers, to help out. Since the stories aren’t big enough to have more than one person work on them at a time, you’ll work on one and Bob will work on the other. Here are the user stories for the new features you’ve got to add:

Note

*You can download the ...