The Pragmatic Craftsman
:: Simplicity from complexity ::
The Pragmatic Craftsman
:: Simplicity from complexity ::
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No matter who. No matter what. No matter when. Short term.Long term. Any term. Writing good code is ALWAYS faster than writing bad code.
—Robert Martin (@UncleBob)
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Is it because of pressure?
Is it because you want to be faster than others?
Or is it just because that’s the way you’ve been doing things and it has worked for you?
I hope it’s not the case. I hope you take the time to do it right. Because if not, as the saying goes, will you have the time to do it over? Or how will you look at it when you see the project codebase turning into spaghetti. Because it will.
I wish it was so clear cut. It’s usually not.
But I do believe in the theory of broken windows. One little “slack,” one not needed “if” statement starts this process. And then it goes downhill. It’s just a matter of time before somebody else puts another if. And another. Soon enough, you start searching where things have broken. It’s no longer easy to fix stuff. So you put another conditional.
That’s how things degenerate.
I’ve seen it many times in my career.
But I try to do it right. I think about consequences of my actions. Consequences of putting one line of code that will make things worse for others, worse for the codebase.
I take pride and always try to leave things in no worse condition when I found it. If I can, I try to make it better. I don’t always succeed. But I try to adjust. Learn. And always have “do it right” attitude. I think it matters.
If we had more people that cared about the quality, our dev world would be a better place.
Related
Write Your Good Code First – blog post by James Sugrue and Uncle Bob’s quote that I found there that gave me motivation to write this post.
A few years ago, Cedric Beust, had a blog entry with the same title. I saved it. Here’s a summary of what he recommended for staying sharp:
- Reading (a lot of reading) is certainly a great way to accelerate your skills
- Studying other languages is also a fantastic and fascinating way of learning new concepts that change the way you think.
- Spend time with “curious” colleagues.
- Practice. Find the time!
It’s a very good entry. You should take the time now and read it.
How do you stay sharp?
I think it’s safe to say that you are not going to stay sharp by not doing anything. But that, I mean, just going to work and doing what’s required of you. Sure, it can happen, but imagine how much sharper you would be if you did something in addition to that.
To be honest, I don’t know a definite answer on what’s the key to staying sharp. There are different ways that can work for you. Rather than trying to tell you what you should do, I’m just going to explain what I do.
I’ve tried many things over the years. I would say that I’m an aggressive type. I spend a lot of time on learning and improvement. And I’m trying to adjust as I go along.
So, he’re what I do to stay sharp.
Reading. I think reading is critical. I try to read at least an hour every day. Book reading, that is. Sure, there is a lot of good and helpful material/articles on the web that you can read. I do that as well. I have my list of blogs that I read. I find reading them very helpful. It helps me to know the state of things. But reading books requires you to put the effort and spend some quality time with the book. It also means that the author had put some quality time to make the book. This combination means is more valuable than just reading an article.
Over the years, I have changed the way I read books. I have converted to reading most of the books in the PDF/electronic format. I find that much more useful. And easier. I can take notes. I can read the same book at work without actually carrying it to work. Sure, I still buy a hard copy from time to time, but only the select few.
Practicing. Reading will only take you so far. It’s easy to read. I know. I’ve done that for a few years. I was on a roll, reading 300+ pages per month. But I noticed that I am not learning that much. Certainly not as much as I’d like. Plus, the rate at which I started forgetting things concerned me. Why is that? Just reading is not enough. Reading something just once might not be enough as well. I am in the process of modifying this cycle. It looks more like this now: Read. Take notes. Practice. Re-Read. Notes. Practice. Do what works for you. One thing is clear: by reading alone you’re not going to grow. You’ve got to practice. The more the better.
Doing more with less. This is a recent revelation for me. It’s exciting to constantly move to new things. Have you noticed that getting a new book is very exciting? But after you put the book on a shelf and it sits there for a while, something happens. Your interest in that book decreases after a while. It’s not new anymore. Not in your mind. You have discovered something else that’s new. Maybe you got a different book. So you focus shifts, that new thing is more “interesting.” It’s the same with reading. Once I am almost at the end of a book, I’d like to move on to the next. Even writing a review for that book seems tedious. I’d like to start reading a new book right away. But I have to break that cycle. I noticed that this is one of the BIG reasons why I don’t learn as much as I’d like. I’m trying to do too many things. Not good. Here’s what I am trying to do now to break this cycle. Before I move on to the next great thing, I have to make sure that I really learned it. And that means re-reading the book. That means writing a project based on the new information. That means writing a blog entry. That means creating a wiki/learning page. You see: that means doing more with less!
I know that the old way didn’t work for me. It’s something that I had to change. It’s still too early for me to report the results. It’s not easy to adjust. But I believe it’s the right path for me.
Staying sharp is not easy. But if you read a few books a year, you will learn more than most. Steve McConnell is Code Complete says: “One book is more than most programmers read each year (DeMarco and Lister 1999). A little reading goes a long way toward professional advancement. If you read even one good programming book every two months, roughly 35 pages a week, you’ll soon have a firm grasp on the industry and distinguish yourself from nearly everyone around you.” You just have to remember to do something with that knowledge to make it “stick.”
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Just as it is a good practice to make all fields private unless they need greater visibility, it is a good practice to make all fields final unless they need to be mutable.
–Brian Goetz
in Java Concurrency in Practice (page 48) |
Are you following these fundamental principles?
Just so we’re on the same page, an immutable object is on whose state cannot be changed after construction.
This view is supported by Joshua Bloch in Effective Java (2nd). Item 13 states: “Minimize the accessibility of classes and members.”
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The single most important factor that distinguishes a well-designed module from a poorly designed one is the degree to which the module hides its internal data and other implementation details from other modules.
–Joshua Bloch
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He goes on to say some fundamental principles.
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A well designed module hides all of its implementation details, cleanly separating its API from its implementation. Modules then communicate only through their APIs and are oblivious to each others’ inner workings.
–Joshua Bloch
Effective Java (2nd), page 67 |
These are really the basics of information hiding or encapsulation. Basics of OOP programming! It’s a good idea to learn these well.
Think twice before making any fields public. Hold it. No, don’t make it public! Think twice before making it any other than private!
But to make sure you only expose what is absolutely needed requires some thought. You need your own judgment and experience.
As for the second part, item 15 states: “Minimize mutability.”
I think this one is a little harder to justify and not so obvious. But Bloch has some very good arguments. Together with Goetz, they convinced me that I should utilize immutability more often when I’m designing classes.
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Immutable classes are easier to design, implement, and use than mutable classes. They are less prone to error and are more secure.
–Joshua Bloch
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Convinced!
But how? Follow these 5 steps (as per Bloch).
1. Don’t provide any methods that modify the object’s state.
2. Ensure the class can’t be extended.
3. Make all fields final.
4. Make all fields private.
5. Ensure exclusive access to any mutable components.
Goets says it a little bit differently.
An object is immutable if:
– Its state cannot be modified after construction;
– All its fields are final;
– It is properly constructed (the this reference does not escape during construction)
Immutable objects pack a lot of goodies in them.
One more time. Tell me what are the benefits of immutable objects!
They are simple to understand.
They are thread safe.
They require no synchronization.
Let’s end with a great summary note from Bloch, “Classes should be immutable unless there’s a very good reason to make t hem mutable.”
But.
If…
“If a class cannot be made immutable, limit its mutablity as much as possible.”
Strong statements.
Learn these design principles!
All in all, I recommend reading Item 15 from the Effective Java book. And re-read a few times until it becomes part of your design logic.
It’s all about getting better.
It’s all about improving.
It’s good to learn from the pros. Everybody needs a little guidance. I know I do. (These 2 books are excellent! Recommended.)
Nicholas Zakas, the author of what I consider the best JavaScript book out there, is becoming one of my favorite bloggers! (I should let him know about that. 
) In his recent blog post, he talks about qualities of great software developers. It’s a great post. I highly recommend reading the whole post.
Here’s my take on the qualities from the post.
Always do it the right wayI cannot agree more. There are always people that will say that they’ll improve it later; that this is special and it needs a special condition. It’s a big bull… You do it the right way ALL THE TIME. Really no exceptions.
Good engineers know that the right way applies to all situations and circumstances. If there’s not enough time to do something the right way, then there’s really not enough time to do it. Don’t make compromises, the quality of your work is what ultimately defines you as an engineer. Make sure that all of the code you write is done the right way 100% of the time. Expect excellence from yourself.
Be willing to sufferI never considered this as an asset before. On the contrary, I thought that it must be something wrong with me. I like to develop solutions in my head, thinking hard about them, then implementing. And later find a better solution. I rarely ask others for help. And I usually come up with good solutions. Hmm, maybe there’s hope in my software engineering skills.
Great engineers first and foremost want to solve the problem on their own. Problem solving is a skill, a skill that great engineers take seriously.
Never stop learningIf you have been reading what I write on this blog, I don’t need to say anything else. This is an absolute must if you want to be considered a great software engineer.
In order to be a great engineer you must first admit that you don’t know everything, and then you must seek out more knowledge in every way you can.
Share your knowledgeI believe that’s what makes you valuable to the company you work for. That’s how you distinguish yourself from others. This is how you think “big picture”.
Great engineers want others to know what they know. They aren’t afraid of losing their position because someone else can do the same thing. Great engineers want to see their peers succeed and grow.
Lend a helping hand
Great engineers are team-focused and therefore are willing to do whatever it takes to help the team.
Do I need to argue with that?
Take your timeIt takes time to develop and improve on your skills. The only way to do that is by learning iteratively, practicing. It probably will take 5 to 10 years, or even more, for you to acquire great skills. To acquire that craftsman’s touch.
ReferenceWhat makes a great software engineer?, Nicholas C. Zakas
As programmers, we want to finish things fast. We want to impress our boss. We want to be better and always finish before others.
So we do. We finish things as fast as possible. Because the requirement was to complete the things that were on the list.
Just make it work.
What’s the end result? Code that is hard to read by others. Code that is rigid. Code that is fragile. Code that is over complicated. Basically, code that has the characteristic of “fast food” — it does what is supposed to, right?
Wouldn’t things be different if one of the requirements was “high quality.”
The statement is ambiguous. Sure. It means different things to different people. It could be more specific: “code should be easy to read, easy to extend, and easy to modify.”
High Quality. Enough said.
You could argue what quality really means. That’s not the point. Just stating that it has to be of high quality puts everyone on the same page: it communicates the expectation to the team.
“Why don’t we just add a special exception here.” No, you would say. That’s going to lower the quality of the code. That’s going to make the code more fragile and harder to extend. It does not meet the quality requirement.
I personally don’t need to be told that — quality is always on my list. I always try to make the code that I write be of high quality. I put focus on that. I don’t always get the results I want, especially after I look at my code after a period of time. But I learn. I improve.
There is just too much of low-quality code around. Too much pressure to finish fast and no pressure on quality.
Having quality a requirement would make a huge difference. I strongly believe that.
Even if your manager does not require it, “High Quality” should be one of the most important requirements when you write code. It’s not easy to write high quality code. That’s for sure. You learn with experience, by trying things out. Patterns develop after a while. Then you study a bit more. But having that focus we’ll make you a better coder and distinguish you from the others.
Related
Code quality and the fat developer, very good post by Consulting jiujitsu
I am reading Kent Beck’s book Implementation Patterns (which is great so far) and he talks about three values that are consistent with excellence in programming: communication, simplicity, and flexibility.
Kent put it so well, and these values are so timeless… that I had to write about it.
Communication“Code communicates well when a reader can understand it, modify it, or use it,” Beck writes.
Programming for the computer works fine. For the computer! Not for the person modifying it. “Good things happen when I think of others while I program,” Kent writes. Program for the other person!
But who cares? I just want to write the code as fast as possible and be done with it. Wrong! Beck writes, “The majority of the cost of software is incurred after the software has been first deployed.” From Kent’s experience, he sees that he spends much more time reading the existing code, than writing new code. And that’s a fact! Is your experience different?
When you think “How would someone else see this?,” you see your code from a perspective of another person.
SimplicityWhy would you make your code simple? For economic reasons, of course. “Eliminating excess complexity enables those reading, using, and modifying programs to understand them more quickly,” writes Beck.
A little complexity is unavoidable. How much? It depends who your audience is. But Kent puts it perfectly, “Challenging your audience a little is fine, but too much complexity will lose them.”
“Pursuing simplicity enables innovation.” I can’t agree more with Kent.
FlexibilityPrograms should be easy to change. Simplicity can encourage flexibility. Enhancing the communicability of software also adds to flexibility.
The bottom line: create simple, understandable applications that can easily be changed.
I have said it many times… programming is easy. It’s easy to just write a few classes, add functions and have a running program. Anyone can learn that. However, to program well, you have to be able to design classes that have good structure, are easy to modify, easy to understand, and are able to withstand business changes. Now, to do all of that well is hard. Very hard. Object oriented programming helped in that area. But to do it well is also hard.
To me, Robert Martin has had the most influence on the OO world. The OO principles/patterns he created are hard to understand. But they are timeless and fundamental. If you learn them, follow them, and can identify them in your code, then I think you are a good OO programmer. If not, keep learning.
I was happy to come across this site that lists all of Martin’s principles. Study them. Learn them by heart. And start using them. You will become a better designer. Only after you master them, I think, you can call yourself a good OO programmer.
If you have not seen the books I recommend, I truly recommend reading Martin’s book, Agile Software Development.
I also recommend reading anything Uncle Bob writes. You will not be dissappointed.
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Good code is easy to change.
–Manuel Klimek
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I strongly agree with Manuel. Keep in mind that you write code for somebody else to modify. If it is not easy to do so, then your code is not good! Remember that maintainance is 70%+ of the project’s life. If you cannot make modifications easily, then you really are wasting time. It’s good to keep that in mind when you’re rushed and “hacking” instead of producing good code. In the end, you pay handsomely if you speeded initially.
Some excerpts from Manual’s excellent blog entry.
Make the code easy to change. This means modularity, abstraction, low coupling and high cohesion and all the other wisdoms of software development that are known for ages.
Find the model that fits best for your team and make the code easy to change so that the poor souls that will maintain yourcode when you leave earth on your mission to Pluto are able to refactor it to make change even more easy for themselves.
An automated test suite makes it easier to change the system without breaking it. Even if you never implemented a newfeature and later realized that you’ve broken a different feature, remember that you write code not for yourself, but forother people who have to maintain your code.
Practice makes perfect.
I think you can agree with me on that. To become a craftsman, you not only need to acquire new knowledge and new skills, you need to be able to apply that knowledge, be able to polish your skills, and improve the output every time. I don’t remember who said it, Mozart I think, that every time he played the same piece, he did it differently. He was always looking to improve it. That’s the type of mentality of a true craftsman. And that’s what I need to develop to become a true craftsman.
Practice new technologies: put your knowledge to the testOver the last few years, I must have read 20-30 software books. I learn a lot, no doubt. But rarely do I actually put that knowledge to test. I just read, make notes (sometimes), and move on to another book. Doing it this way, I think my knowledge is not deep enough. I really cannot do anything with it, and I easily forget it.
I need to read a little and be able to put that knowledge to practice: I need to apply it. How do I do that? By writing a project based on that technology. By practicing — playing — with the new technology.
For instance, I want to learn Ruby (and Rails). Before I can say that I learned it, I should build a website or another project in Ruby. Only then I can say that I learned Ruby.
Same with any new technology. To really learn it, I should create my own project based on it. Anything new, whether it is a pattern or a technique, before you really learn it, you need to be able to put it into context. Ask yourself, how can I put that technology to use?
Practice to polish your skillsIn an ideal work environment, we would get to work on new and different technologies fairly often. That does not happen in the real world too often (or you’re lucky). As a result, we stagnate and get used to our working environment. I don’t think that’s a good situation. As a craftsman, you can never let your skills stagnate — lose freshness. You have to stay abreast with new technologies, acquire new skills constantly. But how? On your own!
Use your down time at work to freshen up on your skills. Once again, practice comes into play. Think the project you’re working on could benefit from migration to a newer, better technology. Do it! On your own. Start a new project, and migrate the old project to the new technology. Doing this keeps your skills fresh. You’re gaining new skills.
Playing with new technologies is very important. If you cannot do it at work, you need to find time for it, whether at work or at home.
Practice to polish — improve — the productEvery time you build a product, always strive to make it better. Better than your previous one. That’s the mentality of Mozart. I think that’s a mentality of a craftsman. And that’s what you want to become, right? Then you have to have that mentality! In design meetings, suggest a better way; when designing on your own, reflect and see what could be improved from your last project.
By practicing continuously, you’ll be able to see how things can improve. You’ll be able to build on your skills. You’ll be able to keep your skills up to date. This is key to getting better, improving your skills, and becoming a better developer, a craftsman. And remember: you can never stop practicing!
Once again, and that’s the bottom line, to move into architecture, to move up, to become a craftsman, you need a lot of practice. You need to continue practicing or you will not be “crafting” but “hacking.” Practicing takes time, but that’s the only way to make sure that you “got it.” BTW, as a craftsman, you should be loving it!
Programmers love complexity. We love to make things that are complicated.
Why is that? I think it’s because programmers think that it makes them look good. I think they feel they accomplished something big. Or is it that it gives them job security? (probably not)
What’s the root of the problem? I think it’s jumping into code right away. We all love to code, and the first thing we do when we have a problem to solve is try to hash it out in code. Once you start, you try to resolve any issues that arise any way you can. It’s harder to make changes once you start coding, though. Especially when you’re working on something complex and the deadline approaches… So you’re trapped.
The issue here is that programmers forget about a fundamental step in good design: to think about the problem first and design it at high level first. Go through the problem at high level, even if it’s just in your head, or on a piece of paper. Go through the whole scenario. Simple UML here helps as well. By doing so, you might encounter issues that are easy to solve at this high level, but not when you’re coding.
Thinking through the problem usually results in good layers. It usually results in a good domain logic. It usually results in better architecture. It results in higher quality code.
This way of high-level thinking introduces you to thinking abstractly: a required skill in design/architecture.
Not thinking through the problem usually results in spaghetti code. That’s just the way it is, whether you like it or not. And even though you might think it does not happen to you, I think it happens to everyone. You might be an expert in refactoring, and you might be able to get a clean solution, but I say you have a higher chance of just leaving things the way they are.
Here’s what Allen Holub had to say in Holub on Patterns.
“Simple systems are easier to build, easier to maintain, smaller, and faster than complex ones. … Simplicity is often not an easy goal to achieve. Programmers love complexity, so they have a strong tendency to over complicate their work. It’s often easier to quickly build an overly complex system than it is to spend the time required to make the system simple.”
To me, the hardest thing in programming is making things simple. Programming itself, is like managing complexity. In my opinion, that’s the single most important quality of a good programmer: the ability to make complex things look simple. I think the lack of it keeps people programming, instead of moving on to designing and architecting. I think most of us want to eventually be more involved in design and architecture, but until we master the principle of making things simple, we’ll be stuck programming — even though we might have a title of an “architect.”
Look at design patterns. They changed the way we look at design. But fundamentally, behind the scenes, design patterns make complicated problems simple. Patterns are really a facade to complicated problems/issues. And that’s the beauty of patterns.
“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability,” said Edsger W. Dijkstra.
On a related note, if you’re working on something that’s complex and not very pretty, try not to make it worse. Refactor it to make it easier. We don’t usually have the time to do a “big bang” refactoring, but a little here and there helps. One of the principles that I try to follow is to never make things worse than they are. I always try to look for ways to make things better. To me, simple is beautiful.
Stanley
