Comment by mntmoss

1. Write placeholder output, the equivalent of a Hello World for the task.

2. Start parameterizing parts of the program to generate the output, so that more and more of the output comes from a few source variables.

3. Eventually you want a user interface on this and have it load from disk instead of recompiling...and so you end up with a complete program.

You generally don't get there just by concentrating really hard on the architecture. You architect a bit and then try things to get empiric feedback.