Writing Empathetic Code

We mostly focus on technology choices as engineers, but so much about programming is actually about human factors. Let's explore some of those factors and spend way too much time revising one method.

This talk should help us talk about some factors that make our code easy (dare I say enjoyable?) to work with, and infectious in its style.

Transcript

1. Writing Empathetic Code - Ruby, Postel’s Law, and a Little Philosophy Joe Mastey
2. What is Empathetic Code, and Why Should We Write it?
3. Code is empathetic if we can confidently and comfortably manipulate it. Most code is not empathetic. This sucks.
4. Readability > (Some) Performance
5. So How Do We Write It?
6. – Jon Postel “Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept.”
9. Coincidence?
10. – Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching “The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self The highest kindness is to give without a condition The highest justice is to see without a preference”
11. An Example
12. {{ ORIGINAL CODE }}
13. “Be conservative in what you send”
16. Return Types Inputs Output Philosopher, Thought Thought Philosopher, [Thought, …] [Thought, …] Pleb, anything nil
19. “Be liberal in what you accept”
21. {{ WIP WITH ARRAY() PATTERN }}
22. WTF is Kernel#Array()
23. Kernel#Array() Input Output array unmodified object that implements :to_ary object.to_a nil [ ] object [ object ]
24. Other Conversion Functions Complex() Float() Hash() Integer() Rational() String()
27. {{ FINAL PRODUCT WITH USER() CASTING }}
28. So What Do I Win?
29. – Pete Hodgson, “Rails as a SOA Client” “This is the way you evolve (SOA) systems over time without having to redeploy your entire enterprise at once.”
30. More Things to Think About Our tests are also docs, how do we optimize for that? Should we do UX for software libraries? How can we make code that acts as a good role model to the next developer? Good code should reduce the need for documentation (because nobody writes good docs anyway)
31. More Resources Confident Ruby (eBook) - Avdi Grimm Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby - Sandi Metz Thanks.