What is quality code? From cruft to craft

No one sets out to create crufty code, but too often the pressure to "push it out the door and we'll fix it later" gets the best of us all. Before you know it, it's three projects later, the sun is still shining and you're still getting a paycheck. So where is the incentive to go back and clean under the rug?

Poor core quality isn't just a developer problem, either. It bleeds into team moral, deters decision agility, and ultimately prevents team members from getting into flow.

Quality code isn't something that requires a complete rewrite either (which is likely impossible), but can be accomplished with style guides, code reviews and a devotion to team investment time.

The pressure to ship will always be there, but starting (or maintaining) projects with an agreed upon foundation alleviates developers and designers from making potentially hundreds of decisions each day. This leaves room for the decisions that actually matter.

Learn how to transform your team, regardless of your position, into a lean, mean standards machine. Develop a multi-tier style guide, workflow and practices that focus on knowledge and consensus building. Eliminate the mundane decisions and allow the team to focus on its craft.

Transcript

1. From cruft to CRAFT @nickdenardis #psuweb
2. @nickdenardis #psuweb Nick DeNardis Minimalist. UX crafter. Speaker. Realist. 
 Computer scientist. Library scientist. Wayne State University
 Director of Digital Communications TEDxDetroit, HighEdWeb MI, 
 Laravel Detroit & Refresh Detroit
 Organizer Amateur hardwood floor refinisher
3. @nickdenardis #psuweb Housekeeping Slides online
 speakerdeck.com/nickdenardis Music online
 8tracks.com/nickdenardis/psuweb-woodwork Extra resources are available on the slides This is being streamed/recorded Show of hands…
4. @nickdenardis #psuweb How did we produce all this cruft in the first place?
5. @nickdenardis #psuweb Simple ☐ Creating software is hard
 ☐ Lots of unknowns
 ☐ Client changes over time
 ☐ Changing technology
 ☐ Growing expectations
 ☐ Time constraints
 ☐ Money constraints
 ☐ Turnover/student workers
 ☐ Team moral
 ☐ Development environment
 ☐ Training
6. Developer A developer executes. Their talents often focused to a single area. Without need for the “big picture”. Engineer An engineer designs and plans. Always aware of the “big picture”. With talents in many areas. An engineer can assume the developer role. But an engineer’s core focus lies with architecture.
7. @nickdenardis #psuweb Project management contributed to this cruft…
9. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • https://www.getharvest.com/
10. @nickdenardis #psuweb Turnover produced all this cruft…
11. @nickdenardis #psuweb Documentation
13. @nickdenardis #psuweb Team knowledge created all this cruft..
15. @nickdenardis #psuweb Reading code levels up everyone on the team
16. @nickdenardis #psuweb Code reading 101 Pick a function/library/file < 50 lines of code. Set aside 2-3 minutes per line Try to build and run it. Don't focus on the details early. Make sure you understand all the constructs. Now that you've got a good idea about most of the constructs, it is time to do a couple of random deep-dives. There were undoubtedly things in the previous step you were confused about, so this is the perfect time to go and read some tests. No tests you say, sounds like the perfect time to write some.
17. @nickdenardis #psuweb Our turn
18. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/031-rr-code-reading • http://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/ep-2-coding-like-a-boss-w-brian-douglas • Reading code talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW_xKGUKLpk • http://bloggytoons.com/code-club • http://www.slideshare.net/saronyitbarek/reading-code-good • http://www.codewars.com/ • http://www.skorks.com/2010/05/why-i-love-reading-other-peoples-code-and- you-should-too/ • http://www.readingcodegood.com/
19. @nickdenardis #psuweb Code reviews facilitate discussion around solutions
20. @nickdenardis #psuweb Code Review 1. Knowledge transfer 2. Increased team awareness 3. Finding alternative solutions to problems
21. @nickdenardis #psuweb What to review in a PR? • Everyone brings something to the table • Single responsibility principle • Naming • Tests should cover QA, it’s not a reviewer’s responsibility • “Leave a place better than you found it” ~ Girl Scouts
22. @nickdenardis #psuweb Authoring a pull request • Small atomic changes • Should take at least 10 minutes • Provide two paragraphs of context • Only link to `Fixes #1337` as a command
25. @nickdenardis #psuweb Reviewing a pull request • Ask, don’t tell • Negativity bias in written communication • Foster a technical discussion • Never use the word “just” • Be positive
26. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/180283/ICSE %202013-codereview.pdf • http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2013/10/09/ unexpected-outcomes-of-code-reviews/ • Does it need a +1? 
 http://harvesthq.github.io/fias/ • Harvest code reviews
 https://techtime.getharvest.com/blog/code-reviews-at- harvest
27. @nickdenardis #psuweb Refactoring
28. @nickdenardis #psuweb SOLID Principles Single Responsibility
 a class should have only a single responsibility Open/closed principle
 should be open for extension, but closed for modification Liskov substitution principle
 objects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes Interface segregation principle
 many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface. Dependency inversion principle
 Depend upon Abstractions. Do not depend upon concretions.
29. @nickdenardis #psuweb One pass at a time
32. @nickdenardis #psuweb Sandi Metz • Your class can be no longer than 100 lines of code. • Your methods can be no longer than five lines of code. • You can pass no more than four parameters and you can’t just make it one big hash. • When a call comes into your (Rails) controller, you can only instantiate one object to do whatever it is that needs to be done. And your view can only know about one instance variable.
33. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • Sandi Metz - Refactoring
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE • Eye tracking original
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtuO9un2Vyg • Eye tracking refactor
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8M9-LoEuo • How big should a function be?
 http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-3/show • Rules for good software development - http://gist.io/4567190
34. @nickdenardis #psuweb Style guides because you don’t have to think about a default
38. @nickdenardis #psuweb PSR-2 Standards Highlights • Code MUST use 4 spaces for indenting, not tabs. • Opening braces for classes MUST go on the next line, and closing braces MUST go on the next line after the body. • Opening braces for methods MUST go on the next line, and closing braces MUST go on the next line after the body. • Opening parentheses for control structures MUST NOT have a space after them, and closing parentheses for control structures MUST NOT have a space before.
39. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-2/ • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding • http://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-power-of-defaults/ • http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-power-of-defaults/ • https://github.com/waynestate/web-guides • https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide • https://www.drupal.org/coding-standards • http://isobar-idev.github.io/code-standards/
40. @nickdenardis #psuweb Your process created all this cruft…
42. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://danielkummer.github.io/git-flow-cheatsheet/ • https://github.com/blog/2019-how-to-undo-almost- anything-with-git
43. @nickdenardis #psuweb Retrospectives allow you to improve each week
47. @nickdenardis #psuweb Weekly maintenance is everyone’s job
49. @nickdenardis #psuweb Automation because ain’t no body got time to do it by hand
51. @nickdenardis #psuweb Generators
53. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://vagrantup.com • http://yeoman.io • http://gulpjs.com
54. @nickdenardis #psuweb Code formatting
55. @nickdenardis #psuweb Editorconfig # http://editorconfig.org root = true [*] indent_style = space indent_size = 4 end_of_line = lf charset = utf-8 trim_trailing_whitespace = true insert_final_newline = true [*.md] trim_trailing_whitespace = false [makefile] indent_style = tab
56. composer global require fabpot/php-cs-fixer @stable php-cs-fixer fix src/ --level="psr2" --dry-run -v --diff PHP CS Fixer Run it against your code
57. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • https://houndci.com/ • http://editorconfig.org/ • https://codeclimate.com/ • https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/PHP-CS-Fixer
58. @nickdenardis #psuweb GIT hooks
59. # pre-commit.sh git stash -q --keep-index ./run_tests.sh RESULT=$? git stash pop -q [ $RESULT -ne 0 ] && exit 1 exit 0 ln -s ../../pre-commit.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit Symlink in your hooks Stash before running
60. # ~/.bash_aliases alias gc='git commit' alias gcv='git commit --no-verify' How to skip the hook
61. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks • http://githooks.com/ • https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- use-git-hooks-to-automate-development-and-deployment- tasks • http://codeinthehole.com/writing/tips-for-using-a-git-pre- commit-hook/ • https://github.com/codegram/pelusa
62. @nickdenardis #psuweb Measuring results in the real world
63. @nickdenardis #psuweb Before…
64. @nickdenardis #psuweb Growing pains.
65. @nickdenardis #psuweb Now that’s about right
66. @nickdenardis #psuweb Tiny habits will bring your cruft to craft
67. @nickdenardis #psuweb Kaizen • Good processes bring good results • Go see for yourself to grasp the current situation • Speak with data, manage by facts • Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems • Work as a team • Kaizen is everybody’s business
68. @nickdenardis #psuweb Resources • http://www.kaizen.com/about-us/definition-of- kaizen.html
69. @nickdenardis #psuweb Thank you @nickdenardis