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Stories about Software

Sep
20

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5 Reasons Architect and Developers Argue

Category: The Life of a Programmer Tags: | 12 Comments

Editorial Note: I originally wrote this post for the NDepend blog.  You can check out the original here, at their site.  While you’re there, check out NDepend and download a trial.

There’s a cute term for a blog post or article that advertises, in its title, a number of points of interest. For example, “9 Tips for Getting out of Debt,” as a title would quality. This is called a “listicle,” which is a conjoining of list and article into one word (though, for me, this somehow manages to evoke the vague image of someone licking an icicle).

This template is not normally my style, but I thought it might be fun to try it on and see how it goes. The topic about which I’d like to talk today is the various vectors for architect-developer tension and this seems, somehow, uniquely suited to the listicle format.

Where the developer role is pretty standard, the architect role is often vague in its definition and can vary widely from organization to organization. In some shops, the architect is just the longest tenured developer, whereas in others the architect is a specialized role that generates mountains of UML diagrams.

The ambiguity and variance, combined with the fact that architect is nominally ‘above’ developers, creates a breeding ground for interpersonal friction. While not always present, this is a common theme in the industry. So, I’d like to examine 5 reasons for strife between developers and architects.

Spies

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Sep
13

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The Biggest Mistake Static Analysis Prevents

Category: The Life of a Programmer Tags: , | 4 Comments

Editorial Note: I originally wrote this post for the NDepend blog.  You can check out the original here, at their site.  Take a look at NDepend while you’re there; if static analysis interests you in the .NET space, it’s a must-try.

As I’ve probably mentioned before, many of my clients pay me to come do assessments of their codebases, application portfolios and software practice.  And, as you can no doubt imagine, some of my sturdiest, trustiest tools in the tool chest for this work are various forms of static analysis.

Sometimes I go to client sites, by plane, train or automobile (okay, never by train).  Sometimes I just remote in.  Sometimes I do fancy write-ups.  Sometimes, I present my findings with spiffy slide decks.  And sometimes, I simply deliver a verbal report without fanfare.  The particulars vary, but what never varies is why I’m there.

Here’s a hint: I’m never there because the client wants to pay my rate to brag about how everything is great with their software.

Smelly computer

Where Does It All Go Wrong?

Given what I’m describing here, one might conclude that I’m some sort of code snob and that I am, at the very least, heavily judging everyone’s code.  And, while I’ll admit that every now and then I think, “the Daily WTF would love this,” mostly I’m not judging at all – just cataloging.  After all, I wasn’t sitting with you during the pre-release death march, nor was I the one thinking, “someone is literally screaming at me, so global variable it is.”

I earnestly tell developers at client sites that I don’t know that I’d have done a lot better walking a mile in their shoes.  What I do know is that I’d have, in my head, a clearer map from “global variable today” to “massive pain tomorrow” and be better able to articulate it to management.  But, on the whole, I’m like a home inspector checking out a home that was rented and subsequently trashed by a rock band; I’m writing up an assessment of the damage and not tsking their lifestyle.

But for my clients, I’m asked to do more than inspect and catalog – I also have to do root cause analysis and offer suggestions.  So, “maybe pass a house rule limiting renters to a single bottle of whiskey per night,” to return to the inspection metaphor.  And cataloging all of these has led me to be a veritable human encyclopedia of preventable software development mistakes.

I was contemplating some of these mistakes recently and asking myself, “which was the biggest one” and “which would have been the most preventable with even simple analysis in place?”  It was interesting to realize, after a while, that the clear answer was not at all what you’d expect.

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Sep
11

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What a Software Audit Means for You

Category: The Life of a Programmer Tags: , |

Editorial Note: I originally wrote this post for the SmartBear blog.  Check out the original, here, at their site.  While you’re there, have a look around at some of the other authors’ posts.

“We’re being audited.”

Now there’s a sentence to strike fear into anyone’s heart. The most famous and iconic example of an audit is the dreaded IRS audit. This audit is the IRS’s way of saying, “you did something wrong during the course of an extremely byzantine process we force on you, and now we’re going to make your life miserable by going through every inch of your life with a fine-toothed comb.” Or at least, that is the reputation.

irs

Now, while I’m not here to defend the US tax code nor bureaucracy in general, I will say that this is not exactly what the IRS is saying. Rather, they’re saying, “we’ve noticed inconsistencies between what you’ve reported and what we’ve observed elsewhere, and we are going to investigate further.” And, while this investigation does, in fact, mean a lot of unpleasantness for you, that is not the purpose. An audit, per its dictionary definition, is “a methodical examination and review.”

Audits at Your Place of Business

Considered this way, the word loses some of its onerousness, since it is not deliberately punitive. But it’s still not exactly a cause to throw a party – it means that someone is about to come take a very close look at something you’ve done, with exacting rules and detailed expectations. You’re about to be under a microscope.

Having established that an audit is strict and not punitive, what are the implications for you, as a software developer? What does it mean for you code/software to be audited? If your boss or a colleague utters those three fateful words, “we’re being audited,” what does this mean for your organization and for you?

Well, I’m a consultant, so you can probably predict my answer: “it depends.” “We’re being audited” is informative, but it’s not quite enough information. There are, after all, different kinds of audits, conducted for different purposes. Let’s consider a few of them.

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Sep
8

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How to Get Developers to Adopt a Coding Standard

Category: The Life of a Programmer Tags: , | 19 Comments

Editorial Note: I originally wrote this post for the NDepend blog. Head over to their site and check out the original, here.  While you’re there, have a look around at the other posts; if you enjoy static analysis, you’ll enjoy what’s there.

If you’re a manager, there’s a decent chance that the subject of coding standards makes you want to bang your head against a wall repeatedly.  If you’re a developer, you can probably understand why this is true of your manager, if you think about it.

The group coding standard has the following properties.

  • It’s extremely technical and granular.
  • Developers tend to squabble about it.
  • If it produces any business value, it does so obliquely and theoretically, from management’s perspective.

Thus, if I’m a manager, there’s this inscrutable document out there that causes my team to argue, and whose existence I must take on faith to be a good thing.  As you can see, it doesn’t start out on my good side.

Does It Matter?

There are all manner of opinions and arguments to be found on the internet as to why a coding standard matters (or doesn’t).  I’ve wrote about the subject myself from time to time.  So, without belaboring the point, I’ll make the quick business case for it.

The purpose of a coding standard, at its core, is twofold:

  1. It promotes maintainability by making all code look similar and familiar to all developers.
  2. It standardizes approaches that promote correct code (and avoid incorrect code).

Thus, on the whole, the coding standard makes the total cost of ownership of the codebase decrease by some amount ranging between 0 and “indeterminate.”  As an outside party, you simply have to take on faith that there is an ROI and that the amount of time wasted in arguments, complaining, and compliance is offset by the reduced troubleshooting and onboarding times.

And, in my experience, it generally is.  Notwithstanding pouting and bickering that happens early in the project and makes life unpleasant, it’s better to have these things than not to have them.  The key, then, becomes minimizing the cost of having the standard.  And you do this by securing compliance with the least amount of heartburn for all involved.

So how do you do that?  How do you convince the developers to buy in with a minimum of resistance and friction?

Clipboard

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Aug
30

By

How Code Review Saves You Time

Category: The Life of a Programmer Tags: , | 6 Comments

Editorial note: I originally wrote this post for the SmartBear blog.  Check out the original here, at their site.  While you’re there, take a look around at their offering.

Physical labor is one of the most strangely enduring mental models for knowledge work.  Directors and managers of software development the world over reactively employ it when nudged out of their comfort zones, for instance.  “What do you mean ‘pair programming’ — we’ll get half of the work done for the same payout in salary!”  And that’d be a reasonable argument if the value of software were measured in “characters typed per minute.”

WorkHarder

Most of the skepticism of activities like unit testing and code review originates from this same “knowledge work as labor” confusion.  The core value of software resides in the verbatim contents of the source code files, so stuffing all of the features in them ahead of the deadline is critical.  Testing and reviewing are “nice-to-haves”, time and budget permitting.

The classic response from people arguing for these practices is thus one of worth.  It goes something like this: “sure, you can cut those activities, but your quality will dip and there will be more escaped defects.”  In other words, these ‘extra’ activities pay for themselves by making your outfit look less amateurish.  That argument often works, but not always.  Some decision-makers, backs truly to the wall, say “I don’t care about quality — my job depends on shipping on June 19th, and we’re GOING to ship on June 19th, whether it’s a finished product or whether it’s a bag of broken kazoos and cyanide with a bow on it.”

I’d like to take a different tack today and fight a time argument with time arguments.  Instead of “sure, code reviews take extra time but they’re worth it,” I’d like to explore ways that they actually save time.  Whether they save more time than take is going to vary widely by situation, so please don’t mistake my intent; I’m not looking to argue that they’ll save you net time, but rather that they are not exclusively an investment of time.

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