Back then; I did it; I liked it much; Found it a necessary touch;

Never it challenged, I; then saw; A source without it; didn’t look too raw;

Since then it flows without it well Some purists call it living hell.

[…] we do have formal rules that we should obey when writing code. A team has rules, and new team members need to learn them before trying to write any code.

That’s what I wrote yesterday. It’s my email so I can write whatever I think is correct. You’ll let me know through your answers if I am wrong.

My friend Tino answered on Friday and asked whether a university degree or certificates might function as a driver’s license. And that is true to a certain degree. I am getting a new certificate these days as well. I hope to complete the exam on Wednesday (ISTQB Advanced Level — Technical Test Analyst).

The obvious difference to a driver’s license? I am not legally required to obtain one before I can start writing code. Tino also said that he’d find it interesting to be (self)tested in current web-standards and best practices. I do believe these tests are valuable. If I come around to create one, I’ll let you know.

Back to the beginning of the email. Why do rules matter to a team? Developers have their style for writing code. Even if there are rules and certain regulations you have to follow, developers still find ways to write code in their unique style. And that’s a good thing. It would be boring otherwise. Still, this style has to obey the rules. Here’s why:

• The code won’t be too complex. Because your static analysis tools tell you if your cyclomatic complexity metric is too high.
• Classes and modules will have low coupling and high cohesion. This leads to code that’s more easily testable and has higher reusability than other code.
• If you have an error if explaining comments are missing, you could make sure that your developers take some extra time to make sure code can be easier to understand. Other rules, like variable and method/class/module naming conventions, have the same goal.

In short: Rules help your team to write code that is maintainable and has low technical debt. This reduces the total costs of ownership. If you only look at the cost of writing the code and delivering the software, the costs might be higher if you follow stricter rules. Over the complete lifecycle of a software (product), the total costs would be lower because of better maintainability and a lower number of defects.

This is already getting long. See you tomorrow with even more thoughts on this topic.

We don’t have rules of the road for software development. You don’t have to stop at every red light or keep your speed below a specific limit.

Well, yes. We do have rules. If you write your whole program in only one file, someone will tell you that this is bad. At least I hope that’s the case! If you only use variable names like x or y, your coworkers will flag this during code review. Perhaps you already have static analysis tools that tell you before your coworkers do?

While we do not have a driver’s license, we do have formal rules that we should obey when writing code. A team has rules, and new team members need to learn them before trying to write any code. Otherwise, it could feel like driving on the wrong side of the road: Driving on the right side of the road feels natural to you if you’ve never done it any differently. But it can have dramatic consequences if everyone else expects you to drive on the left side.

Every country I know has an obligatory driving license before you are allowed to drive a car by yourself.

No country I know has an obligatory coding license before you are allowed to code by yourself.

The longer the time that passed between the driving license and the current day, the more reckless and careless drivers have become. What I mean is that new drivers are careful. For the rules, for their passengers, for other cars and people. The longer they drive, the more they bend the rules, pass yellow or red lights, or speed just a tiny bit. Everonye does it, why shouldn’t they do it as well. No one is looking anyway…

I won’t argue for a coding license. It would be fruitless anyway, and it would be too hard to establish a standard. But there so many simple (not easy) wins you could have with the proper knowledge and attitude. So many legacy systems less and so many more successful projects.

When was the last time you compared your skills in coding with other people and had the possibility to spot places you could improve? How do you score your ability anyway? How do you decide what to learn or focus on?

Do you decide these things before you start to code on a project, or do you only find out in hindsight, when issues arise or new features begin to get harder to realize? Do keep a list of problems you identified and make sure you avoid them in the future?

I’ll take the next week to look into this more.

I came across a very interesting article written by Herb Caudill, on different perspectives on rewriting software. He highlights 6 different stories of how a rewrite went. You can read about Basecamp, Netscape Navigator, Gmail, and others.

It is a long article, over 30 minutes according to Medium.com. And I am also sorry for linking to Medium. I don’t like them, and I resent sending them traffic. But this story might be worth it.

Here you go: Lessons from 6 software rewrite stories

NB: I do have experience with software rewrites myself. I took part in two endeavors. One thing was a client application. The legacy app was written in Rails 2 (I believe, it might have been Rails 3) and heavily patched. This made maintenance and feature development quite expensive. We rewrote the software but kept quite close to the original in functionality. The rewrite enabled us to use modern gems and solutions we had created in-house for other clients. This used synergies. It was an ambitious project. In the end, I think it didn’t make too much sense, financially. But I couldn’t be sure about that one.

Another project where I helped on a rewrite concerned frameworks for iOS applications. We had customers that wanted to publish iPad magazines on the App Store. To make it easier for themselves, previous developers had written a custom publishing framework. This framework was reused on every project. It was extendable, reusable and efficient. But it was also difficult to handle and very limiting with regards to layout and design of the magazines. Which was a problem for the clients. So they set out to rewrite this. I joined the company while the project was still in progress. I left 2 years later. The project was still ongoing. The rewritten framework was used in every client project, alongside the older framework. For some features, you had to use the old one, because they weren’t yet supported on the new framework. For other use-cases, you had to use the new framework. Especially for certain pages in the magazine, with new layouts. Yeah, it sucked.

How can I get my coworkers to write better code?

We closed with this question, yesterday. If you want to be able to motivate your coworkers to write better code, you have to know where they stand right now. I already wrote a few articles onthis topic. Follow these links, and you’ll get a good idea on what to measure, how and why. You’re welcome.

After reading and measuring and talking with your coworkers, you are still left with the idea of motivating them.

I am good with code and perhaps with words (you decide). Motivation is a “people-topic”. This is psychology. I do know a good book, a classic that you could read: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams The contents in the book will help you understand how to build a great team, how to motivate people and understand their goals. You could adapt this knowledge and make them write better code. Other ideas:

• Invite me to give a workshop on software design and architecture, testing or how to write better code

• Try to use gamification. This could mean that you publicize the code quality metrics and make it a game to increase the score. The weekly winner gets a price (a half-day off of work?). Better: Make it a team effort. Let them all be winners because it was probably not one person that created all the code in the first place, right?

• Send them to workshops, conferences or use learning sessions to help them understand how a better/different way to write code would help them with their job.

  I sincerely believe that engineers, programmers, developers, coders, and hackers (which one are you?) take pride in their work. They always try to do the best they can. I haven’t yet met a single person who deliberately wrote shitty code. Perhaps it was a byproduct of too little knowledge or experience. But never was it their intent. If you help them level up, they will get better. And your code and products will too.