Where Bad Code Comes From? June 2012

I’m Marcin Floryan http://marcin.floryan.pl

Energized Work @mfloryan Value, Flow, Quality

You can find me at:

The ACE Conference:

This presentation:

#aceconf

#mfbadcode

Acceptance criteria

You can give examples of different sources of bad code

You have identified one new reason for bad code you didn’t pay attention to before

You will consider a way to tackle it

☐

☐

☐

Any developers in the room?

Seen any bad code?

? Experienced ���any bad code

? how bad can it get

Mariner 1

$18.5 million

Hartford Coliseum

$80 million

Ariane 5

$500 million

““One  bug,  one  crash.  Of  all  the  careless  lines  of  code  

this  one  may  stand  as  the  most  devastatingly efficient.  

James Gleick

North America black-out

55 million people

““To  err  is  human,  but  to  

really  foul  things  up  you  need  a  computer.  

Paul Ehrlich

Does your code resemble ���this

or this…?

Building ���the wrong thing

Building ���the thing wrong

what how code

““When  people  are  

factored  in,    nothing  is  simple.  

Ken Schwaber

what how

who

code

““A post-modern firm is rich

in information and relies heavily on the daily choices of its knowledgeable employees.

Haridimos Tsoukas

Let’s go back in time

What’s that rustling in the bushes?

FIGHT

You’re fed

What’s that rustling in the bushes?

F IGHT L

You’re safe

back to reality

How about that RAG report?

Running late?

Add more people

Even more late *

*  Consult  the  Brooks  Law  for  details  

How about that RAG report?

Already over budget?

Let’s squeeze the testing

What do you mean quality?

But it worked so well ���

for the 99% of the time

homo sapiens ���

have been around!

Do you ever fly?

? a novice pilot���or���

an experienced captain

or perhaps even������

head of the airline safety program

Welcome aboard KLM Flight 4805 ���

Amsterdam to Las Palmas  

A bomb in a flower shop������������

Las Palmas closed

Landing at Tenerife

law mandated rest period looming

decision to re-fuel

and a T H I C K fog

KLM 747 crashes ���into PanAm 747

Communication misunderstandings

deadliest accident in aviation history

Junior pilots any better?

remember Air France flight 447

so how about���Software

Development

? Ever worked ���to a tight deadline

? Ever worked ���on a high stakes project

? Ever worked ���with senior people

meet Bob*���the architect

* Name changed to protect the innocent

““Good, safe social interaction

is as necessary to successful development as good technical skills

Kent Beck

Difficult Conversations

Recognise���any of these…

How do we tell… our tester

you let all these nasty

bugs through

How do we tell… a new developer

you don’t know the

framework well enough

How do we tell… project manager

we are not resources

How do we tell… stakeholders

your  expectaAons  

are  unrealisAc

How do we tell… operations

we  need  it  live  NOW

How do we tell… our client

I am unable to add value as a coach

we

DON’T.

instead

Time for ���S O L U T I O N S

Ehm… no. ���Not today.

I want you to learn������

and we learn best ���by doing

““One must learn by doing the

thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try.

Sophocles

so instead

some���H O M E W O R K���

for you

Your job

1.  Find some bad code

2.  Trace it back to a difficult conversation

3.  How could you have done it differently?���

My example

1.  Data transfer via FTP upload of text files is really clunky

2.  That’s the way things are done around here. We never challenged this.

3.  Ask to understand rationale behind the decision, present viable alternatives

Follow-Up

• Catch me, stop me, talk to me

• Contact me on twitter @mfloryan •  Submit and discuss your ideas

bit.ly/ace-homework

The Remember Slide

• We’re not optimised for writing code

• Our mental software is mostly legacy code

• We don’t talk to each other

• We hide our emotions

Bibliography

So Thank You bit.ly/ace-bad-code

Resources

•  Hartford Civic Center Arena Roof Collapse http://www.eng.uab.edu/cee/faculty/ndelatte/case_studies_project/Hartford%20Civic%20Center/hartford.htm

•  Mariner 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1

•  Ariane 5 http://www.around.com/ariane.html

•  KLM flight 4805 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

•  Air France flight 447 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

•  2003 North America black-out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout

•  The Kludge Tweet https://twitter.com/jmeydam/status/143405066571886592

Picture Credits

•  The Bismuth Cristals based on “Wismut Kristall und 1cm3 Wuerfel” photo by Alchemist-hp from Wikimedia Commons under FreeArt license

•  "FIGURE 02.2 The Manifesto for Agile Software Development” from flickr by Jurgen Appelo from flickr licensed under Creative-Commons-by-2.0 license

•  "FIGURE 02.3 The Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship” from flickr by Jurgen Appelo from flickr licensed under Creative-Commons-by-2.0 license

•  ”bushes" from flickr by Rupert Ganzer under Creative-Commons-by-nd-2.0 license •  ”Cottontail Rabbit" from flickr by Ken Slade under Creative-Commons-by-nc-2.0 license

•  “Lion” from flickr by Angela Huxham under Creative-Commons-by-nc-sa-2.0 license •  ”the first standup" photo from flickr by Karthik Chandrasekariah under Creative-Commons-by-nc-2.0 license •  "Traffic light stacking" photo from flickr by fabi42 under Creative-Commons-by-nc-sa-2.0 license •  “Tenerife747s” picture from Wikimedia Commons by Anynobody under Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 license •  The Difficult Conversations picture is by Olaf Lewitz from XP Days Benelux 2012 available on G+ •  The Coaching Dojo picture is from Olaf Lewitz (By Ole) at XP Days Benelux 2012 available on G+

The remaining pictures are used under the fair use policy or available in public domain.

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