Think Twice, Code Once

These are the slides for my presentation at Mountain West Ruby Conference. I removed the speaker notes before I went on stage so the actual presentation was a bit different but I've retrieved the notes from my time machine backup so that the slides have context.

Transcript

1. Saturday, April 6, 13
2. Code Is Poetry Saturday, April 6, 13 The right side of my brain make things rhyme The left side keeps it in time Whats in between helps me learn and perceive But do I Believe, I have the answers I need? Ours is a culture of logic and reason But do the ones and zeros truly have meaning Does your software have feelings? Stay Tuned This may be revealing Work harder they said We can rest once we're dead What is the Opportunity cost Of this lack of mental floss? So many questions and no time for thought Maybe you should sleep on it Let rapid eye movements give way to improvement Solutions reduced to abstract illusions Fast asleep and hard at work Generate painless solutions So we've chosen our tools We've lined our minds with patterns of design Muscle memory translates brain waves to square braces And a faint blue glow on end users faces Blue glows become blue screens and sad macs bombs and disasters Did we fail to think or fail to see
3. Think twice, Code once Clever Subtitle that I didn’t have time to think about Saturday, April 6, 13
4. Who am I? • Bill Chapman - wwchapman+mwrc@gmail.com • @byllc • Development Lead @ Academic Software Plus / Liaison International • Partner @ Division by Zero • Co-Founder WNYRuby, Co-Organizer Nickel City Ruby Conf Saturday, April 6, 13 I am a development lead for Liaison International I consider myself a professional thinker. 15 Years professional programming and technical consulting experience Currently my most important role is that of a team mentor
5. Who is Janey? • My dog • Destroyer of shoes • Exfoliator of faces Saturday, April 6, 13 Janey appears to run on intutition. Trust me, Janey thinks she’s an expert in everything and I get an earful of it every time I come home late. But for experts in a subject matter sometimes it is difficult to resist the urge to rely completely on intuition. PMTAL, Andy Hunt - dreyfus model - how individuals acquire skill. Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient, Expert. most never get beyond the Advanced Beginner state. Think about that, by this model everyone in this room is less than competent at most things. dunning-kruger the inexperienced tend to over estimate their ability and this implies that when we are advanced beginners we probably don’t realize it. I introduce this here to make a single assertion. For any given problem that you have not yet solved, you are not yet an expert in that problem.
6. Saturday, April 6, 13 Often as a project “founder”. Someone who has written a lot of the original code. I’ve thought through many of the solutions we have to implement. My brain has been working on it for months or years. Because of this sometimes delegation can be hard. Anecdote about getting frustrated because it takes others longer to ‘code’ Anecdote about waiting for inspiration
7. Saturday, April 6, 13 People who might benefit from this discussion. (Programmers and Persons other than programmers) POPES
8. The Freshman Saturday, April 6, 13 Example from the interview we did recently. The code worked but it looked like a freshman cs 101 project. You can tell when someone doesn’t think the problem through completely. Or a prospective new hire may submit a code quiz result where the tests all passed but they don’t bother to look for cases we didn’t test forDoesn’t necessarily understand why the solution works.
9. Saturday, April 6, 13 A key part of the freshman mentality is that they don’t really what is important. The rest of this project had tons of these screens. Deficiency is they have not yet learned to think through problem carefully or they don’t see the importance in and even if they did they don’t always know what is important.
10. Mrs. Roberts Saturday, April 6, 13 Another individual who might benefit from this discussion. Often patches a problem because they think the bigger issue is too complex o even unsolvable This approach tends to create gremlins in the code base. (Bobby tables jr) Looks productive to management because they always ‘solve’ the problem, Management might not realize that the keep solving the same problem.
11. Saturday, April 6, 13 Here is some of Mr. Table’s work. Apparrently she had some no method errors to deal with and he appears to have swept them under the proverbial rug. This can cause some pretty nasty problems to be hidden from other developers. Deficiency: They are solving the wrong problem by not thinking about the bigger context of their problem
12. The Bob Ross Fan Saturday, April 6, 13 Tosses code at the problem until it works. No one else knows what they are up to and all of the layers of code make it difficult to see the bigger picture.
13. Saturday, April 6, 13 Its hard to find an example of this style of code because the end result is often deceptive. It looks well structured. You’d almost have to just hit ctr/cmd z after they were done typing for awhile. Deficiency: They don’t spend so much time thinking about their solution as much as chasing their intuitive vision.
14. The Mercenary Saturday, April 6, 13 Is somehow able to shut their brain off at 5pm. Cares about whatever language knowledge pays well.
15. Saturday, April 6, 13 This mercenary would list ‘ruby expert’ on their resume. Sure it is valid code but it doesn’t really look like ruby most of us would write. Deficiency: They care more about doing the job than using the right tool or really learning the ones they are using.
16. Pointy Eared Boss Saturday, April 6, 13 Doesn’t always understand what you do. Thinks they know what “working” looks like Wants to quantify what you do.
17. Saturday, April 6, 13 deficiency is that they often focus on irrelevant metrics to evaluate the work you are doing.
18. Get to the point already!!! Saturday, April 6, 13 We are professional Thinkers. And Thinking happens everywhere, it follows us home and invades us in the shower. Interrupts other conversations and thoughts. We do it over dinner, much to the chagrin of our significant others. Thinking is really what we are getting paid to do. and personally I think coding is the easy part. 1. We spend a lot of time honing our code craft. Learning new programming languages, discussing esoteric points of some framework, doing code katas. Do we spend enough time keeping the right tools sharp? Are we keeping our minds healthy? Also The best place for thinking is not necessarily the best place for coding. Have you ever tried to code in the shower? Are we providing ourselves with the best environment for getting our job done? Are our employers and clients?
19. Saturday, April 6, 13 I’m not talking about big up front design or aggressively detailed specification. Whatever the term agile actually means, I consider my current team to be pretty good at the important parts of it. This is more about giving ourselves time to think, doing thinking at the right time, understanding that unconscious thought has value and factoring it in to our plans. The end result of both active and passive thought is not necessarily going to be a specification nor is it always going to fit in to a culturally acceptable work day.
20. Saturday, April 6, 13 So how can I convince YOU and the rest of my intended audience that coding is the easy part. We probably spend too much time focusing on what should ostensibly not a majority of the work we do. I think there is plenty of precedent already. Architecture Roles for best thinkers TDD Style Development (Thought Driven Development) Employment agreements that discuss work done on personal time: What the employer is saying is that we are paying you for your thoughts, all of your thoughts, whenever they occur. As soon as they manifest themselves as a concrete piece of code we own them.
21. Saturday, April 6, 13 So let us assume that I’ve won you over. I don’t think this assertion is a stretch. It’s probably not even that interesting. Lets pay more attention to the actual act of thinking and see what some other professional thinkers have to say about it.
22. Saturday, April 6, 13 This is Poincare (Pwan care ay) I’ve read that Poincaré … worked regularly from 10 to 12 in the morning and from 5 till 7 in the late afternoon. He found that working longer seldom achieved anything … A four hour work day for a significant mathematical mind working on very difficult problems (the poincare conjecture was one of the seven millenium prizes) Sure  this  is  anecdotal  Well  Recent  research  from  Florida  State  University  seems  gives  us  more  to   consider.    The  subjects  were  elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players.  The  best  performers  typically  prac?ced  for  no  more  than  90  minutes  per  session    Taking   regular  breaks  and  rarely  working  more  than  4.5  hours  in  a  given  day.  This  study  asserts  that  during  the  day  we  move  from  alertness  and  into  mental  fa?gue  approximately   every  90  minutes.    It  is  at  these  fa?gue  points  that  we  may  feel  like  we  need  to  compensate  with   caffeine,  sugar  or  other  s?mulants  when  It  is  likely  that  all  we  really  need  is  to  goof  off  a  for  a  bit.    Our  coworkers  may  not  understand  why  we  have  nerf  guns  loaded  and  at  the  ready.     We know that under some circumstances (e.g., Wilson & Schooler, 1991), conscious thought deteriorates the quality of decisions. Question: Are you working too much?
23. Saturday, April 6, 13 4.5 hours a day doesn’t seem like much time to get anything done. What about the rest of the day? There has been a great deal of research in Unconscious cognition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_cognition Have you fallen asleep thinking about something only to wake up with the answer? Apartment study, one apartment significantly better. Subjects asked to choose immediately or choose after a period of being distracted by doing some other task. The distracted group chose correctly almost twice as often as the group asked to choose immediately This finding that has now been replicated a number of other studies (see Strick et al., 2009, for a meta-analysis) The implication here is that their brain was working on the problem, even though they were engaged in other activities. Question: So we are always working on some problems whether we like it or not?
24. Saturday, April 6, 13 In another study participants were asked to recall a list of related words. On group was asked to recall the list after 8 hours of sleep. One group was asked recall the list after 8 hours of waking relaxation. The waking group forgot 25% more of the list than the sleeping group. Question: Wait! You mean even when we are asleep we are still working and possibly even working harder on some problems?
25. Saturday, April 6, 13 But what about getting things done? Other research implies that there is a divide between the thinking mindset and the doing mindset and that you can only really be in one state at a time. Furthermore, some individuals spend more time in one state than in the other. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fight our current state and choose tasks that fit our current mental mode. <maybe give examples> Question: How do we optimize our mental state for the task at hand? Also how can we allocate our teams based on their common states?
26. Saturday, April 6, 13 But what about when we are actively thinking? It is often stated that we only have a finite space for remembering concurrent ‘things’. (7 Things +- 2) Millers Law But I think programmers routinely solve problems involving hundreds or thousands of variables. Question: If we can only have finite working memory space how can we possibly keep track of the hundreds or thousands of variables that go in to solving complex problems?
27. Saturday, April 6, 13 Along the same lines as thinking vs doing there is also possibly a separation of different modes of thinking. Peter Elbow is a well known researcher and writer and his theories on writing have become recognized as fundamental components to teaching others to write well. We have very different modes of thinking. A creative thinking mode and a more linear and directed mode. He asserts that each of these modes are incompatible. Furthermore trying to do both editing (linear and directed activity) and Creative writing is detrimental to the process. His recommendations are to either do each activity in separate sessions or to have separate individuals perform each task altogether. I think it is not a stretch to apply these same ideas to the work we do. My personal experiences with pair programming where the pilot focuses on coding and the copilot thinks through the big picture have shown good results. I’ve talked with quiet a few developers who share this experience. Question: Do we understand the strengths and weaknesses of our thinking modes and how to utilize them? Do we know how to best utilize our teams?
28. Saturday, April 6, 13 I’m doing a talk about thinking but In a lot of ways what we are really talking about is problem solving. That is the full function of our roles as programmers. I started out with an assertion that for any given unsolved problem, you are unlikely to be an expert in that problem. Otherwise it would be solved already, realize that you may have to learn something before you come to a solution. Think, Learn, Apply. This is a process of acquiring knowledge and immediately applying it to acquire more knowledge. Question: Considering that learning is a key part of problems solving, what can we do to make sure we are also providing ourselves with a good learning environment? - Go to the white board, - Mind Mapping - Debating - Sketching - Role Playing a System There are many different ways to acquire knowledge. The three main pathways are considered to be Auditory, Visual and Kinosthetic learning.
29. Saturday, April 6, 13 Several studies assert that Activating more of the brain while engaged in thought has shown to increase mental productivity and effectiveness. Even if the extra activity has nothing to do with your current task. Spinning a pen around your thumb for example tapping your foot. learning with legos etc... Music is an excellent multi sensory stimulant. It can engage the aural, kinesthetic,and even visual centers in your brain. Surgeons Playing Music Fresh Prep, 29 students who failed regents exam. After a 12 day fresh prep 79% passed including 100% of the special needs students and this past summer This past summer, 83% of students passed the course. The anecdote about acting out a system from PMTAL Question: What can we do to augment our approach to problem solving?
30. Saturday, April 6, 13 Wildcard: neuro genesis - ability to regenerate brain cells We may have the capability to generate new brain cells throughout our lives but the environment we work in plays a big role in whether we are growing or killing. Active, thought nurturing environments demonstrate an ability for brain cell growth. Much of the brain cell studies have been done on mice because most research is not done by Hannibal Lecter. For years subjects would show a decline in brain cells and brain function that seemed to correlate with age. New research indicates that it may have been that the mice were living in plain, non stimulating environments. Without much neuro-stimulation their brains would decline but mice that have been raised in environments with significant stimulation showed less or no decline at all. Question: Does constant exposure to dull, repetitive environments sound at all like your work place?
31. We’re sorry Mario but your answers are in another castle Saturday, April 6, 13 The concept of being ‘busy, working’ now becomes a gray area. Should we leave more time for active socialization or personal relaxation in our work day? Maybe we shouldn’t get bogged down in the work until the work is done mindset. If you find yourself stuck on a problem maybe you are in the wrong mindset for your current approach. If we only have so much working memory capacity we must whittle down a problem in to smaller and smaller abstractions. Doing this completely could require a great deal of top down thinking. Do you know how each of the members of your team prefers to learn? Do you know how you prefer to learn? Problems solving is thinking/ and learning iteratively.
32.  undefined  method  `foo'  for  nil:NilClass  (NoMethodError) • Why? : The receiver doesn’t respond to ‘foo’ • Why? : The receiver Is nil • Why? : I’ve made assumptions that the receiver is present • Why? : The receiver really should not ever be nil • Why? : Because we have bad data Saturday, April 6, 13 Just talk the 5 why’s the highlighted middle, why the five why’s overcomes this, this is bobby tables and freshman territory. Than talk about the last itme The 5 Whys is an iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem.[1] The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem. (The "5" in the name derives from an empirical observation on the number of iterations typically required to resolve the problem.)
33. git clean -d -x -f; git reset --hard Saturday, April 6, 13 Returning to the poincare example. His four hours of work was also probably 4 hours of fairly intense thought. There are plenty of less intense activities that we can be involved in during the day. We’ve discussed different states of thinking and learning If we are in a working mode it doesn’t mean we are ready to code the thing we are currently thinking about Try to be aware of your current mental mode and match your tasks appropriately. I personally know that I am a much better at “doing” once my brain has settled down for the day. Before managing a 9-5 team I used get massive amounts of coding done between 8pm and Midnight. Now that I spend more time as a mentor, I get to do more thinking or being the co pilot when I’m best at that stuff during the day.
34. Saturday, April 6, 13 Stop Taking on Too Much Recognize that we need time to think through problems. Bouncing from one problem to the next or one project to the next means we get none of this passive “work” time. If you find yourself in this position you may want to think about coding even less. At times In my life I’ve been engaged in 5 or 6 professional software projects. In my experience, just because you can do one project in one month, that does not mean you can do 6 projects concurrently and finish in 6 months. I believe this is because your unconcious cognition has limits. Figure out how much time you want to devote to work and then realize that that time is not just time spent on the computer. Plan for thinking time and avoid grinding away at code. Many of us consult, have day jobs or take on way too many clients. If we only have a few good thinking hours in the day this may effect they way we allocate tasks in a given week.
35. Saturday, April 6, 13 Recognize Environmental Constructs The best place to think is not necessarily the best place to code. Do what you need to do to keep your mind healthy. If that means pushing for more remote work orworking towards a more flexible office culture. The computer is a distraction machine. When you sit in front of a tool, the instinct is to be using it. But what if you are in Thinking mode?
36. Saturday, April 6, 13 Sleep On It This doesn’t necessarily mean take a nap. Take a walk, Talk about the last episode of Eureka, Stare out of the window blankly . Do something that is not active coding, Give your brain a chance to do its thing. Let it catch up to your code
37. Saturday, April 6, 13 So we all have a lot of decisions to make, every day. Like which restroom to use
38. Saturday, April 6, 13 And Sometimes a little bit of analysis can go a long way.
39. Books and Further Research • Pragmatic Thinking • Thinking Fast and Slow • Smart Thinking • George Miller • Peter Elbow - Writing with Power • Eric Ivancich - Effective and Creative Coding Saturday, April 6, 13 Other referneces: http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=59 http://learnruby.com/presentations/Ruby-Life-Hacks.pdf h"p://calnewport.com/blog/2012/08/31/henri-­‐poincares-­‐four-­‐hour-­‐work-­‐day/ h"p://calnewport.com/blog/2012/08/23/you-­‐probably-­‐really-­‐work-­‐way-­‐less-­‐than-­‐you-­‐assume/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_cognition http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/12/does-listening-to-music-while-working-make-you-less-productive/ http://leadershipsuccessinc.com/recent-posts/item/thinking-vs-doing-mindsets-make-the-most-action (e.g., Wilson & Schooler, 1991) (Bos et al., 2009) (see Strick et al., 2009, for a meta-analysis)
40. Attributions • Wikimedia Commons • XKCD Saturday, April 6, 13 I’m not sure what the attribution is for memes. Derivative Works?
41. Answers? Saturday, April 6, 13 So I’ve got time for a couple answers if anybody has any