I learned more about Microsoft's Excel files today... and what I learned lead to changes in a library and several programs. The change had to do with text strings and Excel's methods of encoding. (It's complicated, and I won't go into it here.)
I had made some assumptions about text strings, and it turns out that they were wrong. I corrected them today.
The corrections had some far-reaching effects. On a typical project, I would have to make a small set of changes and compromise the design of the software. But on my current project, I was able to make the proper changes (or at least "proper" as I think of "proper") and change multiple components.
These changes were possible with back=up from our automated tests. As I made changes, I ran the tests and verified that my changes were affecting the right areas -- and nothing else.
Yay! for automated tests!
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