The Most Dangerous Phrase

Some advice is timeless; it ages like a fine wine. Each time you revisit it you discover a nuance, a new connection to something else. As you grow, the advice is waiting there to reveal another layer you had never considered.

Some advice is a product of its time; it ages like milk. It starts fresh, then it begins to smell, and eventually it rots and can even become harmful! It made sense in the context and constraints of its day, but things have changed and it is no longer relevant.

As Admiral Grace Hopper famously said: "The most dangerous phrase you can use is 'But we've always done it this way!'" Daniel believes this is why so many people have an almost religious zeal for SOLID, Scrum, and other antiquities.

In this session, Daniel argues from first principles why ideas like SOLID and Scrum made sense in their day, over a quarter century ago, and why they have been superseded and should now be considered harmful. For contrast, he suggests Continuous Delivery and lean product development are ageing like fine wines. If there is time, he will show how methods like SAFe have never been relevant and never will be, but can be very appealing to a certain kind of manager.

Transcript

1. “The most dangerous phrase” Daniel Terhorst-North presents… …featuring SOLID, Scrum, and other antiquities
2. CC-BY Disclaimer This is not a technical talk, this is a thinking talk with some technology in it!
3. CC-BY Why do we do what we do? Out of habit Because it is “obviously right” Because this is the way I was taught Because everyone else does it this way Because we’ve always done it this way
4. CC-BY “The most dangerous phrase you can use is ‘We’ve always done it that way.’” — Admiral Grace Hopper
5. CC-BY Some ideas age well Others not so much
6. CC-BY What does “ageing well” mean? “Technology can bring bene fi ts if, and only if,
 it diminishes a limitation.” 1. What is the power of the technology? 2. Which limitation does the technology diminish? 3. Which rules enabled us to manage this? 4. Which new rules will we need?
7. CC-BY “Technology can bring bene fi ts if, and only if,
 it diminishes a limitation.” 1. What is the power of the technology? 2. Which limitation does the technology diminish? 3. How has that limitation changed since? 4. What should we be doing instead? What does “ageing well” mean?
8. CC-BY It helps to understand the context Talk to old people (who were there) I am old people, talk to me! Not gatekeeping, just getting closer to the source Remember, di ff erent old people have di ff erent stories Don’t believe any single source, not even me! Which limitation does the technology diminish?
9. CC-BY When good advice turns bad Single Responsibility Principle Open-Closed Principle Liskov Substitutability Principle Interface Segregation Principle Dependency Inversion Principle
10. CC-BY Single Responsibility Principle “A class should have only one reason to change [or serve one actor]” “Gather together the things that change for the same reasons. Separate those things that change for di ff erent reasons.” “[T]he role of an accountant is di ff erent from a database administrator.” “This is the reason we do not put SQL in JSPs. This is the reason we do not generate HTML in the modules that compute results. This is the reason that business rules should not know the database schema. This is the reason we separate concerns.”
11. CC-BY void render(calc) { … } Calc doCalc(data) { … } Data getData() { … } Single Responsibility Principle void printReport() { } calc = doCalc(data); data = getData(); render(calc);
12. CC-BY Calc doCalc(data) { … } Data getData() { … } void render(calc) { … } Single Responsibility Principle void printReport() { } calc = doCalc(data); data = getData(); render(calc);
13. CC-BY Data getData() { … } Single Responsibility Principle void printReport() { } calc = doCalc(data); data = getData(); render(calc); Calc doCalc(data) { … } void render(calc) { … }
14. CC-BY Data getData() { … } Single Responsibility Principle void printReport() { } calc = doCalc(data); data = getData(); render(calc); Add a fi eld? Change the precision? Calc doCalc(data) { … } void render(calc) { … } ?
15. CC-BY Single Responsibility Principle app ├── assets │ ├── config │ ├── images │ └── stylesheets ├── channels │ └── application_cable ├── controllers │ └── concerns ├── helpers ├── javascript │ └── controllers ├── jobs ├── mailers ├── models │ └── concerns └── views └── layouts Logical conclusion: Ruby on Rails “Separation Of Concerns” [abridged]
16. CC-BY Separation Of Concerns Holistic, e.g. correct vs e ffi cient “…being one- and multiple-track minded simultaneously. “The task of ‘making a thing satisfying our needs’ is split into two parts ‘stating the properties of a thing’ and ‘making a thing guaranteed to have the stated properties’. “Business data processing systems are su ff i ciently complicated to require such a separation of concerns.” — E. W. Dijkstra, On the Role of Scienti fi c Thought, 1974
17. CC-BY Let’s actually separate concerns! Behaviour is a concern; code structure is a separate concern Keep all the code together while it Fits In My* Head ✴ where My Head knows the language, toolchain, idioms, problem domain Only then “gather together things that change together”! - assume programmers are polyglot and that changes a ff ect the whole stack - self-contained sub-reports rather than ReportViews, ReportModels, etc.
18. CC-BY HTMX: a counterpoint “Why should only <a> and <form> make HTTP requests? “Why should only click and submit trigger them? “Why should only GET and POST methods be available? “Why should you replace the entire window? “By removing these arbitrary constraints, htmx completes HTML as a hypertext.” https://htmx.org/essays
19. CC-BY HTMX: a counterpoint <aside hx-post="/clicked" hx-trigger="click" hx-target=“#parent-div” hx-swap=“outerHTML" > Click Me! </aside> https://htmx.org/essays
20. CC-BY “The most dangerous phrase you can use is ‘We’ve always done it that way.’” — Admiral Grace Hopper
21. CC-BY Open-Closed Principle “A class should be open for extension, closed for modi fi cation.” Answers the question: “But what happens if..?” Two fl avours - Bertrand Meyer uses abstract classes - Robert Martin uses interfaces
22. CC-BY Open-Closed Principle Source code was an asset - You would sell a specialised source library for e.g. healthcare or fi nance - Clear extension points so the customer wouldn’t mess up the internals Changing code was risky - poor tooling for deterministic code changes - little automated testing in the C++ or Enterprise Java cultures
23. CC-BY Open-Closed Principle 1999 2001 2000 2010
24. CC-BY Open-Closed Principle Changing code became easy and deterministic! - The IDE refactored code under your fi ngers - TDD enabled iterative design; test automation provided feedback - deterministic build pipelines meant we could fi x forward Services became the asset! - You would integrate with a SaaS through its API - no abstract classes were harmed All code was both open and closed, all the time! - code became malleable, not assembled chunks
25. CC-BY “The most dangerous phrase you can use is ‘We’ve always done it that way.’” — Admiral Grace Hopper
26. CC-BY The others are left as an exercise* Single Responsibility Principle Open-Closed Principle Liskov Substitutability Principle Interface Segregation Principle Dependency Inversion Principle *or read “CUPID—the back story”
27. CC-BY Scrum Started* in the early 1990s with a single constraint - Martine Devos: deliver something in 12 weeks with
 a checkpoint at 6 weeks (“sprint to halfway”) Novel practices emerged - multi-year release became 6-week Sprints - detailed Gantt chart became lightweight Sprint Plan - multi-month features became vertical Backlog items - monthly steering became daily Scrum - Business Requirements Document became Backlog of desired items - time-consuming hand-o ff s became Dev Team fl ic.kr/p/9LLNfg
28. CC-BY Scrum No one could believe what they are seeing! - Delivering within a quarter was “impossible” - Hardware procurement took months - Compiling and linking code took hours Two pioneers of Scrum wrote the Guide - Certi fi cation provided a direct lineage to real practitioners Scrum exploded into a $billion certi fi cation industry - eclipsed all other Agile methods, became synonymous with “Agile” xkcd.com/
29. CC-BY In the 30 years since… Technical landscape has evolved beyond recognition - Languages that compile in milliseconds - Continuous Delivery from check-in to tested, live system - Procurement and provisioning of compute infrastructure on demand - Web deployment and beta app channels enable rapid and rich user feedback Scrum moved the game from years to months or weeks - now it moves the game from minutes to months or weeks - solves for problems that no longer exist (except where they do!) Scrum
30. CC-BY A modern alternative to Scrum Two planning cadences: quarterly OKRs and in the moment Organise teams around anticipated demand - As fl uid as the demand is dynamic, quarterly re-teaming - Some people not even in teams! Deployment is a technical decision, release is a commercial one Daily steering is about what is left, not what is done
31. CC-BY Why do we cling to obsolete technology? Commitment & Consistency Bias - “No one ever got fi red…” Mindshare, money accrete over time - Do not assume malice or greed, just structural inertia Bounded rather than centred communities - Boundary prevents evolution - Tweaking for “clari fi cation” - Gatekeeping by the founders
32. CC-BY Look past the Scrum and SOLID dogma Assess your own tools & practices - Which should you change, and towards what? Talk to some old people - and remember, I am old people! “You must think for yourselves!”
33. CC-BY “The most dangerous phrase you can use is ‘We’ve always done it that way.’” — Admiral Grace Hopper
34. CC-BY https://dannorth.net daniel@dannorth.net @tastapod @tastapod@mastodon.social Come and fi nd me! Thank you