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Hate The Code
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Ian Asaff
November 14, 2012
Programming
3
400
Hate The Code
A brief commentary on how to change your engineering team's attitude about the code it writes.
Ian Asaff
November 14, 2012
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Transcript
Hate the Code Making code suck less Ian Asaff 9/28/2012
• Awkward teenage phase of engineering team growth • Modest
technical debt • Coding decisions based on legacy issues • Staying the course doesn't scale Where we are
We all own the code
Everyone writes janky code.
EVERYONE.
You are NOT the code you write. (your ego may
not be aware of this)
• Encourages individual ownership • Discourages collective ownership • No
feedback means easier to go off the "rails" (heh) Silo coding is bad
No feedback means slower growth as a developer...
Which means you are short-changing yourself every day.
• It's ok. • Really. • Code needs to get
beaten up. • Tough love. Let's talk trash about our code
Need to bang out a feature?
First, get the bare essentials working (MVP)
Then... throw it to the wolves
• Every developer has something to contribute • "Hey, junior
dev. Does this make sense to you?" • "Hey, senior dev. Would you have done it this way?" The takeaway is...
The next step...
Seek out criticism and feedback • “I know this isn’t
great. What can I improve about it?” • "Am I better today than I was yesterday?"
A little secret...
You aren’t coding for yourself.
You are coding for the poor bastard coming in after
you.
My last job: WTF is this shit?
Oh. I wrote this six months ago…
Our codebase is our startup
Iterate (refactor) quickly based on feedback (from other devs)
Don’t ignore pain. Dive into it. Setting up dev environment
sucks. Ruby script for installation? Test data is irreplaceable. DB dump after migrations are run? Let's make things suck less
“This code is fragile and mission critical. Don’t touch it.”
VS “This code is fragile and mission critical. Let’s refactor so it’s easy to understand and debug.” What's better?
What annoys you every day? How can you make it
suck a little less?
What about our bottom line?
There's business value here!
• “That’s X’s code. Ask X how it works.” “X
is out until Monday…” • Low bus factor • “Just this one time…” • “We need to ship this…” Technical debt is expensive
• “I think it basically works this way… Let’s dig
in a bit.” • Higher bus factor • Frequent discussion about the code Let's move toward...
Easier to understand code means...
Faster ramp-up time for new devs (more productivity → $$$)
Extending and refactoring are less this
and more this
which ultimately leads to more
ABC -- Always Be Communicating The takeaway
So where do we start?
Everyone reviews code
Be merciless with feedback but...
Don't be an ass.
Remember you are not your code.
Enjoy leveling up as a developer while increasing your value
to the business
Thanks.