Considering the amount of time I spent as an undergraduate designing analog circuitry, I thought I'd be a decent electrician.
This couldn't be more wrong.
1. My dexterity skill is low, maybe a 9. I'm a klutz, have poor motor skills, my hand writing is illegible, the list goes on. This does not work well for wire manipulation. Actually this does not work well for manual labor in general.
2. Theoretical knowledge of electricity doesn't help much; it may even hinder you (it hinders me). In general, I like to explain everything, my husband calls this phenomena, Wendy's wack a** theories. I think coming up with connections and reasoning (more like randoming) is a lot of fun. With electricity, my theories are convoluted, usually involve Ohm's law, and are ALWAYS wrong.
3. I lack patience and after failing at wiring a circuit I start hacking away at it, just trying to make anything work... Constantly running back and forth to and from the circuit breaker. Like hacking code, this just wastes time and leads to poor quality. Not the best sacrifice when it comes to electricity in your home.
Recently, I've spent a great many hours changing a light fixture, outlets and switches around the house recently and I've come away with this knowledge:
1. A voltage tester is a worthwhile investment. I don't own one, but I really, really should. Its like coding without a debugger and with no TDD, a debugger would be quite useful.
2. Before you replace existing circuitry, study the current setup carefully before taking it apart. Otherwise, you will be confused by the 8 wires available when you only need 2.
3. Like working with other peoples code, working with others peoples circuits is scary, and things built a long time ago were built, well, oddly. Keep this in mind.
4. Refactor existing circuitry one switch, outlet, etc at a time. Its annoying, because you need to return to the circuit breaker a lot (unless you live on the edge), but at least you are always in a working state and you know when you broke your circuit.
5. If you are replacing an outlet with two pairs of wires, it is either powered by separate circuits or powering something else. You can check the hot side of the circuit to see if the bridge connecting the top and bottom is there -- if it is, then the bottom wires are being powered by this outlet, and you don't need to remove the bridge on the new outlet. If its not, remove the bridge on the new outlet. If you get this wrong, things will break.
6. Having a pair working with you is priceless. They can call 911 for you. And I was told this afternoon that your dog doesn't count (unless it knew how to call for help).
7. No matter how annoyed and frustrated you are, its never a good idea to do one more quick "test" without turning off power at the circuit breaker.
If I approached circuitry like I approached software, I would be a much better electrician! I suspect applying agile and xp methodologies work very well for all home improvements. I hope I remember this tomorrow morning!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
DevTeach here we come!
If you missed Oksana and me at Code Camp (or just can't get enough), we'll be hosting a session on pair programming at DevTeach in May!
Scott Bellware put together an excellent Agile track, and its going to be a great event.
If its not on your schedule, you're not thinking about missing a conference that features speakers as exciting as Oksana and me, are you?
Scott Bellware put together an excellent Agile track, and its going to be a great event.
If its not on your schedule, you're not thinking about missing a conference that features speakers as exciting as Oksana and me, are you?
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
I'm an abstract thinker
You know those idiot savants who see numbers as colors and can do complex multiplication? I'm kinda like that... I don't think of code or abstractions, I just know them immediately for every problem I encounter... kinda like seeing numbers in color, though I'm far from a programming idiot savant.
I see connections and patterns in everything, and I spent a lot of my early development days building frameworks. This was fun. At one of my previous jobs, I built so many frameworks, they created an unrelated (successful) product leveraging the frameworks from the original (also successful) product. There was a third, but I wouldn't call that as successful; its scope and complexity were too large and initial requirements were unrealistic (though I do think a poor developer is working on it and cursing me at this moment, sorry Eli).
I digress...
At Oxygen, we don't build frameworks, we use other peoples. In the beginning of my career I used many c++ libraries and frameworks that made my life more difficult than if I wrote the code myself and I stayed away from using other people's code -- it never did exactly what I wanted, it was buggy, and I had to take time to learn how to use it.
However, Kris and Luke are really good at finding the right frameworks and learning how to use them. This makes using other people's code a lot more approachable and I've grown to love some, like Castle.
Here are just a few reasons to use other people's frameworks:
1. The code evolves for you
2. Luke and Kris will figure out how to use it*
3. Respect from peers who use the framework (oh, you use castle, you must be extra cool and smart! -- I don't know if this happens in real life, but you never know)
4. Common language between developers
5. Global reduction of rebuilding of the wheel (wouldn't it be great if we shared all our code?)
6. You don't have to rewrite it when you change jobs
Here are some reasons to write your own:
1. It works exactly how you want to and you can change whatever you want (yeah, you can do this with open source, but I'm lazy and don't want to work in other peoples stuff :P)
2. You don't need to learn how to use it
3. Its fun
4. Pride of writing something cool (this can be misinterpreted as stubbornness or vanity so I would leave this one on the down low)
5. You could contribute it to open source and be super nice and cool :)
6. It doesn't exist
*You don't necessarily need someone named Luke and/or Kris on your team, just someone who's patient and interested in learning how to use other people's work :)
I see connections and patterns in everything, and I spent a lot of my early development days building frameworks. This was fun. At one of my previous jobs, I built so many frameworks, they created an unrelated (successful) product leveraging the frameworks from the original (also successful) product. There was a third, but I wouldn't call that as successful; its scope and complexity were too large and initial requirements were unrealistic (though I do think a poor developer is working on it and cursing me at this moment, sorry Eli).
I digress...
At Oxygen, we don't build frameworks, we use other peoples. In the beginning of my career I used many c++ libraries and frameworks that made my life more difficult than if I wrote the code myself and I stayed away from using other people's code -- it never did exactly what I wanted, it was buggy, and I had to take time to learn how to use it.
However, Kris and Luke are really good at finding the right frameworks and learning how to use them. This makes using other people's code a lot more approachable and I've grown to love some, like Castle.
Here are just a few reasons to use other people's frameworks:
1. The code evolves for you
2. Luke and Kris will figure out how to use it*
3. Respect from peers who use the framework (oh, you use castle, you must be extra cool and smart! -- I don't know if this happens in real life, but you never know)
4. Common language between developers
5. Global reduction of rebuilding of the wheel (wouldn't it be great if we shared all our code?)
6. You don't have to rewrite it when you change jobs
Here are some reasons to write your own:
1. It works exactly how you want to and you can change whatever you want (yeah, you can do this with open source, but I'm lazy and don't want to work in other peoples stuff :P)
2. You don't need to learn how to use it
3. Its fun
4. Pride of writing something cool (this can be misinterpreted as stubbornness or vanity so I would leave this one on the down low)
5. You could contribute it to open source and be super nice and cool :)
6. It doesn't exist
*You don't necessarily need someone named Luke and/or Kris on your team, just someone who's patient and interested in learning how to use other people's work :)
Whats in a name?
English is ambiguous. It is easy to misinterpret well formed sentences not to mention variable or class names.
As developers, we put the definition of a class in its name. Its a good practice. It enhances readability. Its a difficult skill to master, but important.
While a good tool for readability, it is not a substitute for documentation or a complete way of understanding a class' responsibilities or interactions (tests work great here). Even if a class is named well, it can still be misinterpreted and we enter a dangerous path when we rely on names alone.
English can't be taken too literally and what means something to someone means something completely different to someone else. I'm not sure English will ever be enough context to understand a class... With resharper, I'm a big fan of ctrl-b (go to definition), ctrl-alt-b (go to inheritor) and ctrl-alt-f7 (find usages), this is a quite a useful and quick way to explore code and can take even less time than analyzing a name!
The other day I read some bizarre, but entertaining and artistic naming conventions and I found readable and more enjoyable... interesting idea; I wonder if it would ever catch on :)
As developers, we put the definition of a class in its name. Its a good practice. It enhances readability. Its a difficult skill to master, but important.
While a good tool for readability, it is not a substitute for documentation or a complete way of understanding a class' responsibilities or interactions (tests work great here). Even if a class is named well, it can still be misinterpreted and we enter a dangerous path when we rely on names alone.
English can't be taken too literally and what means something to someone means something completely different to someone else. I'm not sure English will ever be enough context to understand a class... With resharper, I'm a big fan of ctrl-b (go to definition), ctrl-alt-b (go to inheritor) and ctrl-alt-f7 (find usages), this is a quite a useful and quick way to explore code and can take even less time than analyzing a name!
The other day I read some bizarre, but entertaining and artistic naming conventions and I found readable and more enjoyable... interesting idea; I wonder if it would ever catch on :)
Monday, March 19, 2007
Depressing blog?
One of my fellow developers told me this blog has been depressing... making them feel that we aren't quite the snazzy agile team.
I understand why they feel that way.
In the spirit of agile, I write openly about our shortcomings. In many companies people are reprimanded or even fired for pointing out issues internally, forget about posting them publicly.
I would not show weakness in our agile group if I were not confident in our teams spirit, devotion, intelligence and adaptability. We all love and appreciate the agile practices and I feel very lucky to work with such a talented group.
Agile is a great tool, but its difficult. It takes effort. Its frustrating. Like anything worth doing, you have to work at it. And like anything you love, sometimes you write about why its so great and sometimes you need to write about why its so difficult.
I understand why they feel that way.
In the spirit of agile, I write openly about our shortcomings. In many companies people are reprimanded or even fired for pointing out issues internally, forget about posting them publicly.
I would not show weakness in our agile group if I were not confident in our teams spirit, devotion, intelligence and adaptability. We all love and appreciate the agile practices and I feel very lucky to work with such a talented group.
Agile is a great tool, but its difficult. It takes effort. Its frustrating. Like anything worth doing, you have to work at it. And like anything you love, sometimes you write about why its so great and sometimes you need to write about why its so difficult.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
where do the bugs go?
Our 45/55 resource split (or lack of resources) has become apparent on our new product development. We spend 45% of our time on new product work (a very exciting WPF application, Ript) and the other 55% on internal enterprise work (to keep the tv station up and running). This split yields about 4 development days on Ript during each two week sprint .
We're all excited about Ript and want to share it with our friends and family. This gives us extra drive to complete the list of stories left for release!
This drive coupled with the lack of time has become evident in a recent spike in bugs and refactoring cards. The goal of the current sprint is stabilize the application, because we ended our last sprint with an unreleasable application. So, our burndown for the sprint included every known bug in application.
Our burndown looks something like this:
Sprint goal: Stabilize application -- fix 18 open issues
Bugs fixed so far: 26
Bugs left: 16 (I told you that last release was unreleasable!)
Because our goal is stabilize the application, we're treating the bugs as stories and adding stories to the sprint as bugs are found.
How did we get here? We are all profession, strong developers who are very committed to quality...
What went wrong?
Well... we've been "finishing" stories when they aren't really "done."
This isn't happening because we are lazy or over worked or don't understand the requirements, but because we are so desperate to move forward in the project.
When you have a 2 week iteration, even if you don't spend all 2 weeks on the project, you want to finish 2 weeks of work. Especially after a few weeks of enterprise work that take up more than 55%...
Enough explaining why we have bugs...
What was this post about anyway? Oh yeah... making bugs stories...
I had an ah ha moment the other day when I was thinking about where bugs belong in the sprint backlog. As a developer and a user of an application, I don't want any bugs. Our customer proxy may want features before bugs are fixed, but we may want to fix bugs before adding new features, because the bug could be a smell of a bad design or some needed refactoring... basically prioritizing bugs difficult!
Have you seen this bug rating system before (or something similar)?
Priority 1: Application crashes, no work around, data corrupted/lost
Priority 2: Application crashes, work around OR bug, data corrupted/lost, no work around
Priority 3: bug, no data corrupted/lost, no work around
Priority 4: bug, data corrupted/lost, work around
Priority 5: UI interaction, nuisance, no loss of data or work
This makes prioritizing bugs easy, but there are a lot of times a priority 5 issue, which is usually considered releasable, could be the downfall of an application. Meanwhile there could be a random crashing issue that occurs on one machine that gets fixed first because it is priority 1... not to mention, its so random it takes days to track down (there goes an entire sprint!)
Not only do these make little sense for prioritizing your sprint, they also offer no help when it comes to quantifying the impact of bugs on the teams velocity...
Introducing my new system of bugs:
Rules:
1. All bugs are stories
2. Like other stories, they are prioritized by the client and estimated by the team
3. If a bug appears as a direct result of a story completed in the sprint, it is added to the sprint and impacts velocity
4. Every sprint there is a small timebox to fixing/investigating bugs that the client hasn't included in the sprint (this doesn't affect velocity and the sprint should be planned accordingly)
5. Although the client prioritizes the backlog, the developers should feel confident about their codebase and may request bugs get fixed ahead of higher priority stories
What do you think?
The main idea is that bugs, like anything else, need to be user facing and should impact your velocity and sprint planning.
Like some other things, bugs happen :)
We're all excited about Ript and want to share it with our friends and family. This gives us extra drive to complete the list of stories left for release!
This drive coupled with the lack of time has become evident in a recent spike in bugs and refactoring cards. The goal of the current sprint is stabilize the application, because we ended our last sprint with an unreleasable application. So, our burndown for the sprint included every known bug in application.
Our burndown looks something like this:
Sprint goal: Stabilize application -- fix 18 open issues
Bugs fixed so far: 26
Bugs left: 16 (I told you that last release was unreleasable!)
Because our goal is stabilize the application, we're treating the bugs as stories and adding stories to the sprint as bugs are found.
How did we get here? We are all profession, strong developers who are very committed to quality...
What went wrong?
Well... we've been "finishing" stories when they aren't really "done."
This isn't happening because we are lazy or over worked or don't understand the requirements, but because we are so desperate to move forward in the project.
When you have a 2 week iteration, even if you don't spend all 2 weeks on the project, you want to finish 2 weeks of work. Especially after a few weeks of enterprise work that take up more than 55%...
Enough explaining why we have bugs...
What was this post about anyway? Oh yeah... making bugs stories...
I had an ah ha moment the other day when I was thinking about where bugs belong in the sprint backlog. As a developer and a user of an application, I don't want any bugs. Our customer proxy may want features before bugs are fixed, but we may want to fix bugs before adding new features, because the bug could be a smell of a bad design or some needed refactoring... basically prioritizing bugs difficult!
Have you seen this bug rating system before (or something similar)?
Priority 1: Application crashes, no work around, data corrupted/lost
Priority 2: Application crashes, work around OR bug, data corrupted/lost, no work around
Priority 3: bug, no data corrupted/lost, no work around
Priority 4: bug, data corrupted/lost, work around
Priority 5: UI interaction, nuisance, no loss of data or work
This makes prioritizing bugs easy, but there are a lot of times a priority 5 issue, which is usually considered releasable, could be the downfall of an application. Meanwhile there could be a random crashing issue that occurs on one machine that gets fixed first because it is priority 1... not to mention, its so random it takes days to track down (there goes an entire sprint!)
Not only do these make little sense for prioritizing your sprint, they also offer no help when it comes to quantifying the impact of bugs on the teams velocity...
Introducing my new system of bugs:
Rules:
1. All bugs are stories
2. Like other stories, they are prioritized by the client and estimated by the team
3. If a bug appears as a direct result of a story completed in the sprint, it is added to the sprint and impacts velocity
4. Every sprint there is a small timebox to fixing/investigating bugs that the client hasn't included in the sprint (this doesn't affect velocity and the sprint should be planned accordingly)
5. Although the client prioritizes the backlog, the developers should feel confident about their codebase and may request bugs get fixed ahead of higher priority stories
What do you think?
The main idea is that bugs, like anything else, need to be user facing and should impact your velocity and sprint planning.
Like some other things, bugs happen :)
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
xkcd
Robert recently posted about a web comic he found and I love it!
Some of my favorites:
fun with resistors
sometimes math is useless
pair tactics
Thanks Robert!!
Some of my favorites:
fun with resistors
sometimes math is useless
pair tactics
Thanks Robert!!
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