Breakable Toys

For this week I have decided to do my blog on the Breakable Toys pattern. The problem presented when your environment does not allow for failure. As a college student I know what it feels like to be in an environment that does not allow for failure. If you fail classes then you cannot move on to the next semester, class, project, or graduate! Since I understand the feeling of this environment, I was naturally interested in what this pattern had to offer for me. The book says that the only way to learn is by failing so that you can learn how to correct that failure and get it right the next time around, growing as a person and a software developer. I enjoy this thought because I can think of many numerous occasions where I have failed at something – not just limited to software  development – and learned from my mistakes in the end. How are we to learn why something is correct without first understanding what happens when it is not correct? In my eyes, if we see why it fails then we can understand its true purpose and understand why it needs to be correct. This pattern suggests failure in order to learn. It does not suggest blowing stuff off and failing at the “real deal” stuff that will  be done at work, but rather urges us to practice on smaller projects/ideas with the same toolset as the “big one” in order to fail on a small level and in turn understand the true meaning of our toolsets. This is important because if we fail at a small level it will be easier for us to understand where and what went wrong and how to better understand our toolset that way when it is time for the big project we will have full understanding and control of our toolset so that we will not fail on the real-deal. The book also suggests building a wiki style page as your small project because you can track yourself through it, in turn building off of it and making it something big and meaningful from something small and easy.