Trifecta

Software engineers are a strange bunch. We're forced to thrive on bits of random trivia, and are often literal to the point of being intolerable. It's sort of a cart/horse dilemma though, I'm not sure how to write the causal equation although I suspect that software gives us an outlet for our oddities more than it creates them.

One of the seemingly more peculiar attributes (good) software engineers have is the fact that they want to be productive and do good work. If given the choice to face a challenge or avoid doing any real work most of us would pick the challenge every time. What this gives a manager of such engineers is huge potential that just needs to be pointed in the right direction.

However, there are a few key things that can squash the enthusiasm of any engineer. Or rather, there are a few things that need to exist for them to be content. After many conversations about this with my colleagues, I think I've been able to boil it down to three fundamental concepts.

Here, I present to you, the Software Engineer's Trifecta of Happiness:

- Cool stuff to work on
- A good work environment
- Fair compensation

If we can have these three things, happy and productive engineers we will be.

Cool stuff to work on

First and foremost, cool stuff to work on is going to be key to most software engineers. If we are bored at work we won't be sticking around that long. This doesn't mean that we have to be constantly inventing the latest and greatest startup idea with bleeding edge technology, but we need engaging challenges to work on.

Bob's Brochure Site #7 might not sound all that exciting, but there can almost always be challenges found in the details of even a mundane task. However, if our work environment doesn't encourage innovation and forces us to do Bob's Brochure Site #7 exactly the same way as we did #1-#6 any chance of it being a cool project are nil.

Software engineers love our craft because it lets us invent things. One of our core principals even states that repeating ourselves is one the greatest sins you can commit. If we're not given the freedom to experiment and try to improve the project and ourselves we'll grow tired of any project that is thrown our way.

A good work environment (a.k.a. respect)

Respect is our currency. It's how we interact with each other and how we organize ourselves. Pretty much everything that goes along with a software engineer's good work environment has to do with respect. Sure, fun perks are great, but even that gets translated to showing respect for the employees' well being.

A good work environment also has to be supportive and empowering. Like I mentioned about cool projects, if the environment isn't conducive to growing and being productive it's really hard to be satisfied. If we can't feel any ownership over the projects we work on our motivation plummets.

We're stereotypically quick to complain, but that stems from having a very low tolerance for things that don't make sense. This low tolerance is part of why we are good at our jobs - being able to quickly decide something is suboptimal is a key skill to have for software development. There are few things that kill our enthusiasm faster than feeling like management or policies that don't make sense are getting in the way of our work. To us, it seems like these kind of managers or policy makers don't respect us enough to bother making good, thoughtful decisions. We're coming in every day, trying to work, and people that are supposed to be on our team are putting roadblocks in our way.

I could go on and on about what makes a good work environment, but it's way too much to go into right now. To summarize - treat us with respect. We don't have to get our way all the time, but you can't pull the wool over our eyes about things that directly affect us and expect us to not notice. Let us know why things are happening that seem counterintuitive and they will be much easier to swallow. If you can do that and give us an environment that encourages us to grow and constantly improve ourselves and we'll happily crank out feature after feature. And always remember the cement cutting board principle - let people affected by the policies help make the decisions.

Fair compensation

Ah, everyone's favorite topic. At the end of the day, the reason everyone goes to work is to get paid. The trick is to make us forget that's why.

Money really isn't a good motivator for software engineers. We're more than happy to get paid a fair market price to do our jobs. However, money is a great de-motivator. Not getting paid competitively ties back to the the respect issue. Unless you can provide amazing projects at an amazing place, we're going to notice that our paychecks are lighter than they could be. We're pretty good at doing greater-than and less-than comparisons ;) Soon we'll begin to feel that people don't appreciate the work we do.

I think places like my current job get this one right. Everyone's compensation is presented neatly and fairly and is competitive in the local market (really). You know exactly what you're getting, and then you can forget about it. The last thing you want is as bunch of employees focused on their compensation. You need those brain cycles spent on development, not grumbling about money.

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So there you have it, the Software Engineer Trifecta of Happiness. Three fundamental principles that when combined make a surprisingly potent combination. The best part is all the legs of the trifecta focus on being more productive and being able to take pride in a job well done, something that everyone from clients to managers to the employees themselves want anyway.

Extreme musings pt. 2

This is part 2 of my reflections after 2 months of XP development. (Part 1 can be found over yonder.)

A culture of productivity

One thing that XP really fosters is a culture of getting things done. The entire process is focused around delivering tangible business value to your customer. TDD, and even more-so BDD, are setup so you only write the code you need to get an actual task done. Gone are the days of engineering an entire framework only to later realize it won't work with future requirements or that it wasn't needed at all.

One thing I do miss with this style of development is that it can be fun to architect the frameworks. There is definitely a perceived elegance to throwing some headphones on, getting in the zone, and cranking out huge swaths of code.

However, even though I think I've had success with writing those kinds of frameworks, I can't argue that XP delivers more business value faster. There is still room for those frameworks in XP, but you don't end up writing them until there is a real need for them.

I've heard a saying before that goes something like "The first time you write something, do a one-off, the second time do a one-off, and the third time figure out if there's an abstraction." This what XP guides you to do.

Another thing that's really refreshing is that everyone I now work with is simply focused on being productive. It's not even a burden to them mandated from some whip-cracking exec as much as it is just who they are. An XP shop, at least the one I'm at, seems to automatically weed out anyone who would rather spend half a day surfing the web than be working. The fact that your pair can probably tell the difference between reddit and an IDE probably helps ;)

Less stress

As a whole, the developers I work with who are doing XP are less stressed than any other group I've ever seen. A lot less actually.

A common myth seems to be that if you're not stressed, you're not working hard enough. It's as if there is this secret potential that can only be unleashed if you're stressed. I think it's just the opposite, at least with people who naturally want to be productive. (And do you really want to work with anyone who's not?)

XP (and Agile) is all about getting the most value out of the time you have. You have 4 developers and 2 weeks - lets get the most value we can out of it. Everyone is considered on the same team and everyone has the same goal.

As long as everyone on the project agrees to stick to that approach it results in really happy developers who are excited to crank out quality features faster than I've ever seen. I've been lucky and haven't had to deal with external pressures such as a conference or presentation that might squeeze the timeline yet, but I would say there is less total stress among the ~50 developers I currently work with than the amount in the 12 developers I was with previously.

Also, in true XP fashion, overtime is pretty much disallowed. There are rare cases where this rule is broken, but it's far from the norm. Having a team of fully rested, alert developers seems be often under-appreciated elsewhere, and I'm glad that, as an anti-cement-cutting-board company should, a good life/work balance is highly valued.

Happy customer

All these factors seem to result in happy customers, which is a huge win. Having an honest and engaging relationship with your customer might seem scary at first, but when it works it's a beautiful thing.

Most of our projects have the product owner on-site where they can see exactly what is going on every single day. There's really no way to hide anything, and in the end you realize you don't need to.

For example, my current customer has been quite satisfied with the results we've been able to deliver, and I think it's largely the XP process we can thank for that. We've been honest with him, and he's appreciated that. When thing are good we let him know, and when things aren't going as planned we tell him honestly. The transparency has built a level of trust within the team that is really refreshing. Ultimately, it's better to have your customer decide to abandon a non-essential time sink of a task than to pretend everything is ok and end up delivering sub-par quality.

If XP is wrong, I don't wanna be right

At the end of the day, XP isn't a perfect glowing mecca of butterflies and sunshine, but it's as close as I've seen so far. I often feel like I'm at some sort of oasis where developers have gathered after being worn out at other jobs.

It's really great to be a part of a dedicated team of people solving real problems and providing real value every single day. When you couple that with an environment of honesty and an intentional lack of overtime, you don't have to twist my arm to convince me it's where I want to be right now.

People ask me how we can survive in the economy when we bill in pairs and pay employees well. I tell them I don't know all the details, but we constantly have so much work we're turning down jobs - so something must be going right. At this point, as long as I can have a job where I get to work like this I'll let someone else worry about the rest :)

Extreme musings pt. 1

The main reason I started this blog was to chronicle my thoughts as I transitioned not only to a new job but to an entirely new development style. Since I'm approaching the 2 month mark, I figured now was a good time to check in.

To recap, I'm now doing fairly strict XP - pair programming full time, test driving everything, and an engaged customer whose job it is to manage our backlog. Previously I was doing some sort of half-assed scrum/agile where our biggest victories were having CI, sprint planning meetings, and short (2 week) releases.

Pairing

One of the biggest changes and something I've written about before is pair programming. I had done some pair programming before both in school and professionally, but only when tackling an especially hard problem. Doing it for a full 8 hours every single day is a different beast entirely.

It probably goes without saying that the most critical piece of the pair programming equation is who you are pairing with. I've had the opportunity to pair with 6 people in the past 2 months and each person has been radically different than the last. I could probably write an entire post about different pair personalities, but to keep this at a high level, I think there are 2 main points I've discovered: There are people I really enjoy pairing with and it's been equally helpful to pair with everyone on the team. (To be fair, I haven't paired with anyone I've disliked, but inevitably you'll work better with some than others.)

Obviously it sounds like it would be great to pair with the people you really click with, and it is. But I think that pairing with the other people is equally important. There are always things to learn from pairing with someone new, and I've found it's very important when working on a team to understand the position of all team members on the project. Most of the time when developing, you're spending your brain cycles figuring out how pieces of the application should go together, and the more people you've paired with, the better your understanding of the pieces will be.

Tests f-ing rock

Having a full test suite on your application is awesome. I really can't say that enough. Having a full test suite on your application is awesome. There, I said it again.

I've been writing unit tests for a few years and before doing full time BDD I always felt like I was missing an important piece of why tests are useful. I get it now. When you truly have complete test coverage of your application you are in a position of great power and flexibility. Refactoring, even scary refactoring, is suddenly conquerable. Bugs are more often "oops, we forgot about..." instead of "dude, did you even run this before you committed?!"

The thing about tests is that if you don't have full coverage, you're only getting a fraction of the benefit. It's not until you can reliably count on your tests catching any bugs that you can reach the full potential of a test suite. I do think that some tests are better than no tests, but once you hit the magical full coverage mark, it's an exponential growth in what you get out of them.

(By "full coverage" I don't necessarily mean every single line is directly tested, but that the intent of each method and class is covered. Think BDD instead of TDD, although I'm sure more "pure" TDD can have the same benefits as well.)

...

This post started to get a bit longer than I originally expected so I'm going to break it up into more parts... installment 2 coming soon :)

Good enough

When doing XP development, I've found that the notion of "good enough" comes up a lot. It's a pretty common thing to have to think about when programming, but when you're pairing full time it's something that actually gets discussed directly instead of just going by your gut or by how ambitious/lazy you're feeling on any given day.

When writing code, as with most things in life, there isn't really a black and white concept of "done". Think about mowing your lawn - the point is to get all the blades of grass to a short, uniform length. How uniform your grass must be is really a matter of opinion. Do you let the lawn mower get it relatively close? Probably. Do you go around cutting every single blade by hand with a ruler? I hope not. Do you spend double the time to trim all the edges? Probably. Do you spent another 50% more time to trim that hard to reach part behind the planter that you can only see from that one specific angle? Maybe.

This same pattern applies almost directly to software. Do you make the code meet the requirements? Yes. Do you fine tune every single line of code for the utmost clarity? Probably not. Do you make the new API's you write as easy to use as you can? Maybe.

So how good is good enough? It's always a tradeoff between time and quality. When doing TDD/BDD the test suite can help you with this balance by giving you a safety net of tests to rely on. You can code with confidence that what you're doing will work and that it should play nicely with the rest of the code base. I think this lets people make the "good enough" call earlier than they might otherwise. If your test run green and your requirements are fulfilled you're done, right?

Usually this is great - the sooner you can confidently say "good enough", the sooner you can start working on the next feature. The time/quality scale has been shifted in your favor.

However, I think this safety net can lead people into other traps as well. If you always throw the "good enough" flag as soon as you can, you've become a high risk for technical debt. If you ignore the grass that grows behind the planter for too long, it can start to take over other parts of your yard, and now you have a big problem on your hands.

This problem definitely isn't specific to test driven projects - I've seen many a code base with the programmers gasping for breath in an ocean of debt. The difference I've seen in the TDD projects is that you can actually survive in these oceans. When you have your life jacket of tests strapped to you, the waves don't seem so scary. But again, I'm not sure that is really the best thing either.

One of the major reasons for doing TDD/BDD is that you increase your velocity. You can plow forward without having to worry about the past. However, like on any project, if you don't take time to keep things clean, the technical debt you'll accrue will quickly start to work against whatever velocity gains you made in the first place. Having a suite a of tests certainly helps, but it doesn't make you immune to these kinds of things.

So I issue this plea to all developers, those doing TDD and those not: Remember to take time to keep things clean and sensical in your code and I will do the same, as someday I may be in your code base and you in mine.

Leave my constructors alone!

That's right, leave my constructors alone! Yes, they are mine. Why, you might ask? Because someday I might want to use them, and if they are doing anything fancy I might not be too happy about it!

Consider the following:

function Foo(bar) {
  this.bar = bar || {};

  this.refresh();
}

This is a pretty common pattern - you set fields and do whatever initialization is needed. In this case, the constructor is using a refresh method, presumably so new objects and refreshed objects all get setup with the same code.

This might look fairly innocent, but what does that call to the refresh method really do? I don't know, and that's just the point. Maybe it sets some default values. Maybe it makes a database call. Maybe it makes an AJAX request for more data. This is an important thing to know when using an object written this way, as well as when you need them for testing.

What if, for example, refresh makes an AJAX request for more data and updates this.bar when it gets a response. (This could be a likely pattern when your views are data-bound, you would initially show default or cached values and then the view would update itself when new data came in.)

Now, think of testing with Foo objects. Every time you need one you have to worry about an AJAX call being fired by the constructor. Even if you have fake responses in place this can add a lot of complexity. And what about your code? If your tests are hard to maintain, will the actual code be that much better?

Another example - what if for the purposes of a test, we needed to mock the refresh method before it is called. In the JavaScript example above that would be possible if you are using prototypal class patterns (Foo.prototype.refresh = ...).

But, what if we needed to mock the refresh method for just one instance of Foo that you're particularly interested in? Now you're in trouble. True, there are some hackstechniques you might be able to use such as changing Foo.prototype's refresh method before constructing the instance you're interested in, and then changing it back, but that might not always work.

What if your class is written like this:

function Foo(bar) {
  var self = new Base();

  refresh();

  return self;

  function refresh() {
    // Do AJAX-y things
  }
}

Now you're really screwed. How do you control the refresh method in this case? There's no way to prevent it from being called with the actual implementation. Even making refresh public by putting it directly on self wouldn't help, you still couldn't change its behavior until after the object is constructed.

I've found that when object construction is as simple and fast as possible the world is a much happier place. Use the constructors to save off some fields (this.bar = bar) and set some default values if needed.

That's it.

Nice and simple.

If you're concerned that some necessary behavior (such as calling refresh) might be forgotten, create a factory method that will wrap that up for you:

function createAndRefreshFoo(bar) {
  var foo = new Foo(bar);
  foo.refresh();
  return foo;
}

It's not foolproof since your objects could still be constructed without this function, but I think it's a worthy compromise to make.

The overarching theme here is to avoid design patterns that limit you down the road. Having any sort of complex behavior in your constructors is definitely one of those patterns and I would argue it should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Keep things simple. Help your fellow developers. Help yourself. And leave my constructors alone!

JS Class Patterns

I've been in a lot of discussions lately about JavaScript design patterns, specifically around how to write a class. The two patterns in the lead are as follows:

Decorator pattern, new Foo() returns a decorated BaseClass object:

function Foo(bar) {
  var self = new BaseClass();

  var baz = 42;

  self.publicFn = function() {
    return bar + baz;
  };

  return self;

  function privateFn() {
    bar = 0;
  }
}

Prototype pattern, more traditional JS:

function Foo(bar) {
  BaseClass.call(this);

  this.bar_ = bar;
  this.baz_ = 42;
}
Foo.inheritsFrom(BaseClass);

Foo.prototype.publicFn = function() {
  return this.bar_;
};

Foo.prototype.privateFn_ = function() {
  this.bar_ = 0;
};

At first, I was 110% in the Prototype camp. It feels like how JS is "supposed" to be used and has some undeniable advantages. Object construction using prototype instead of decoration is much faster, uses less memory, and is usually considered a Good Thing™.

It also lets you know what type objects are in a more intuitive way. With the Prototype pattern, typeof new Foo() will return Foo, where as with the Decorator pattern typeof new Foo() will return BaseClass since what you really have is a decorated BaseClass object.

Using the prototype object to add functions to your class lets you also gives you a lot of flexibility regarding function overriding. It makes mocking objects much easier, and lets you wrap functions with things like logging on a global level instead on an instance by instance basis.

The Decorator pattern does have some advantages though. You can have privately scoped variables and functions. You don't have to worry about execution scope since you always have a variable "self" to reference. You definitely hear a lot less "is this this, or is this that... which this is this?!" when using the Decorator pattern.

Overall, the Decorator pattern behaves much more like other OO languages at the cost of performance and flexibility you get with the prototype object.

When listed out like that, I'm still at least 99% in the Prototype pattern camp. However there are some other key factors that have started to change my mind:

Talking to the team, we discovered that development speed has increased significantly by moving to the Decorator pattern. This could be attributed to a lack of JS knowledge by the developers since the Prototype pattern is fairly JS specific, but they are all very smart, talented engineers so the learning curve affects should be minimized. I think even the reduced debugging time from having the "self" variable has helped a lot. I've done a lot of JS development, and I know I forget to bind functions to the right "this" from time to time.

Test effectiveness has also been much better with the Decorator pattern. With actual private variables and functions there are less shortcuts taken in tests. We end up doing less pure "unit" tests and more domain tests, and since we don't have automated integration Selenium-ish tests for our current project's platform that has been quite helpful.

Also, on our project, the performance loss from not using the prototype object is basically a non-issue, so the Decorator pattern doesn't hurt us much in that regard. We are only constructing a handful of objects at a time (less than 100) so we're only sacrificing a couple milliseconds of CPU cycles if that.

I don't claim to have the all encompassing answer for which pattern is better, but for our project, I'm starting to lean more towards the Decorator pattern, or at least acknowledge how it's helped our development. Anything that can improve both development speed and quality wins major points in my book.

One of the reasons I bring this up on the blog is that the whole discussion is the perfect anti-cement cutting board story. In another world, someone could come in and impose cement cutting boards like "You need to use the Prototype pattern since that's the most JavaScripty way." Or even "Both those are wrong, use Crockford's latest and greatest pattern."

However, on our project, we, the developers, not only get try multiple patterns but discuss and come up with a solution that works best for us in the real world. These kinds of decisions couldn't come from anyone other than those in the trenches with real hands on experience.

Ultimately, we are the ones it matters most to since we are the ones that have to deliver a great product to our client. Even if we use a design pattern that loses us some academic brownie points, if we deliver a better product faster, we still win, our client wins, and that's what really matters.

What's in a comment?

One of the biggest surprises I had at my new job was finding out that writing code comments pretty much doesn't happen. It's not explicitly forbidden, but it is unofficially looked down upon by the developers.

Previously, I have always used code comments - Javadoc style method comments were more or less required (for the useless metric of code/comment ratio), and I would sprinkle others throughout the code as I thought was needed. I definitely don't want to fall into some sort of macho "you need comments?!" type of mentality, but if there is a better way of doing things I'm all ears.

Around my new office, the general thought on comments seems to be that if you need them you're doing something wrong. Also, we will often look at tests to see what any piece of code should do. Since we're using Jasmine (basically modeled after RSpec) each of our tests starts out more or less like a code comment anyway.

For example, say you saw this code:

MyApp.prototype.launch = function(action) {
  if (action == 'viewActivePages') {
    this.view.showActivePages();
  }
}

Reading this, you start wondering when launch would get called this way - there isn't any time you can think of where you would want to launch with this action. Then, looking at the tests you see this:

desc("#launch") {
  desc("when user taps dialog") {
    it("should show the active pages") {
      myApp.launch('viewActivePages');
      ...
    }
  }
}

Suddenly it all makes sense, you remember that the app can be launched by tapping on a dialog, and when that happens you should expect to see the active pages. The tests have successfully served as the comments.

This clarity could have also been accomplished with a comment:

MyApp.prototype.launch = function(action) {
  if (action == 'viewActivePages') { // tapping on dialog
    this.view.showActivePages();
  }
}

However, what if after looking at that comment you saw that the tests instead said this:

desc("#launch") {
  desc("when user taps dialog") {
    it("should show the user's work items") {
      myApp.launch('viewWorkItems');
      ...
    }
  }
}

Now you have conflicting information. The comment says that 'viewActivePages' should happen when a user taps on a dialog, but the tests say that 'viewWorkItems' should happen instead.

I drug you through the example above so you will have an idea of where I'm coming from on this. I don't know what the right answer is for whether or not to write code comments, but here is what I have figured out so far:

- Code comments, when they exist, should explain the why, code should explain the how
- Comments should be used when the code can't be made as clear as you would like (happens in CSS a lot)
- If you feel you have to write a ton of comments, you probably are doing it wrong
- Reading a comment is a lot faster than looking at a test
- An accurate comment can save you a lot of time

However, I also have found this to be true:

- Comments are often inaccurate, they get outdated very quickly and aren't well maintained
- An inaccurate comment is much worse than no comment at all
- Tests aren't perfect but are maintained much more than comments are

One place that I definitely think comments should be included is when the code can't convey all the information. For example, if you chose one algorithm over another because it performed better, it's probably worth putting in a comment to say so. The old slower algorithm won't be left around to show people reading your code that it was removed or explain why.

Another place that comments can be very useful is in things like CSS where you are very limited in how you code things. Conveying intent can be very useful when you come in later and try to figure out why something was done a certain way.

So what do you think? What is the right time to write comments? What should your threshold be for when warning bells go off when you find yourself wanting to write one?