Book Review: Apprenticeship Patterns

I finally finished the book “Apprenticeship Patterns – Guidance for the aspiring Software Craftsman”. It took me about 2 months to finish it, because I don’t have enough time to read it, usually I read it at waiting time for the Go train.

This book changes my strategy of my career path. If you want to become a master of software craftsman, then you should focus on improving your craft, not on promotion, not on money. This is a long road.

“sustainable motivations”
You need to keep motivate yourself, nurture your passion, beware don’t let yourself trapped into Golden Lock:" I'd like to learn something new ,but what I already know pays too well."

You need to find a better company, better job, team and co-worker. Love your job, do what your love, then money will follow. Money itself is not the goal, it is just the byproduct along the road to master. It gives me an insight that you should focus on finding the job that you truly love and passionate, even if it is low pay, because once you have the passion, you will generate creativity and energy, then it will generate the money for you. Another great example is Steve Jobs, in his commencement address to Standford’s class of 2005, he said: “You've got to find what you love “..., “Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

This book helps me reinforce the understanding of the patterns, the author draws quite a few maps, connecting different patterns, then I realize the importance of the map, because it reveals the connections and relationship of each pattern. It inspire me that pattern itself is important, but also the connections. We should not only focus on each pattern itself, but also their relationship to other patterns.
Those patterns seems simple, it give ms an insight that yourself can find your own pattern if you think deliberately.

My favorite patterns in the book are:

• Be the worst
• The white belt
• Nurture your passion

My personal goal is finding the Tao of programming, which is the right way of software developing, so go from apprentice to master is a must path for me.

I have another blog about this book: My personal practice map.

The Evil of Java ME preprocess

Developing Java ME application is painful, because of Java ME's own fragmentation in nature. Java Mobile developers have to deal with different devices, and each device or platform has different implementation. Writing a portable application to support different devices is really hard, and some time it is really a torture.

To solve the fragment issue, NetBeans IDE provides a solution - Preprocess, it is similar to pre-compile in C and C++. Actually preprocess in NetBeans is quite perfect, quite powerful. When I first use it, I feel it is so powerful, so easy to use.  Several years later, when I look at our code, which have #if, #else every where, I just feel the code are so ugly, seems to return to the c code era. I really feel preprocess is an evil! Following are my reasons.

Violate OO Principles
Since preprocess is so easy to use, just add something like comments, it gives developer a backdoor to break OO principles easily and brutally. It is so easy to hack the program, so there is no need to care about abstraction, no need to care about design patterns. And the problem is my colleagues like to overuse preprocess, mostly even use preprocess for constants!  I saw so many code full of magic numbers, and so many preprocess directive scattered every where to change those values.

It also violates OCP principle, OCP means "Open for extension, closed for modification". But preprocess is modifying the existing source code when you add new preprocess configuration. It is quite common that the change works for the new configuration, but will break the old ones.

I found if we use more design patterns deliberately, like strategy pattern, abstract factory pattern etc, and use constant class instead of magic number directly, we can minimize the preprocess greatly.

Hard to Refactor
Refactoring the preprocessed code is really difficult, for example when you rename a method name or variable name, you can only refactor the current active preprocessed code, because others are commented out. Right now in my current project I have 4 different devices type, so every time when I refactor, I have to test 4 times to make sure my change is working. It is really painful!

Hard to Reuse
If you want to reuse a class or a component to another project, but when you see so many preprocess scattered in the code, probably you will not use it.  Either you have to add all those preprocess into your new project which might does not make any sense, or you have to manually remove them, which is even harder to test.

Hard to understand
When you read the code has so many #if #else statement, it is ugly to read, more difficult to understand, code is not clean.

Hard to maintain
When you want to port the current application to a new device, you have to understand how the previous preprocess work; when you want to fix a bug for specific device, you have to make sure it won¡¯t break the others. Manage so many preprocess configuration is really painful. So preprocess is good for short-term, but really painful for long term.

IDE Lock-in
Because of widely use of preprocess, our projects are locked in NetBeans IDE, we can not use other IDE, like Eclipse.  For my experience, NetBeans IDE has some problems for example:

• you can't use different source code folder for different configuration, you can easily do that in Eclipse MTJ;
• Build automation is difficult, I don't understand the NetBeans generated build xml, I have to build inside the IDE, I never tried to run build file outside the IDE, and I don't know how create a customized ant build file, I think it is really hard;
• Difficult for team work. NetBeans project use absolute path, and private project properties. Which means it works in your computer, but might not work in your co-workers environment, or you have to take a while to set up the environment correctly.

Conclusions
Java ME preprocess is easy for short-term, but painful for long term, it solves one issue by generating more issues in future; it delay your pain in a short term, but you will be more painful for long term.

Suggestions for anti-preprocess

• Try to minimize the use of preprocess, we can't 100% percent remove the preprocess, but be ware to use it, only use it when no other options.
• Have the discipline of writing clean code, readable code and maintainable code, before you use preprocess, think it carefully, if there is better solution;
• Use OO design patterns, for example strategy pattern and abstract factory can remove lots of preprocess;
• Try to use configuration file instead of preprocess, if we put the constant value into resource property file instead of hardcoded using preprocess, we can also make the code cleaner;
• Centralize the preprocess, if you have to use preprocess, don't allow them scattering every where in the code, try to put those preprocess specific logic together, even better to put them into one class, it would be easier to read, understand and maintain;
• DSL/Meta programming, if fragmentation is unavoidable, why not use code generation technology to generate source code for each specific platform for us? This needs compiler skills and Domain Specific Language knowledge, it is really an interesting topic.

My Personal Practices Map

Currently I am reading the book called Apprenticeship Patterns – Guidance for the Aspring Software Craftsman. In page 85, the pattern “Reflect As You Work”, it mentions a technology called “Personal Practices Map”. You can use this technology to analyze and reflect your idea and what you did.

This idea originally comes from London’s Extreme Tuesday Club. The page "Maps of People’s Personal Practices".

This is my Personal Practices Map.

Using map to reflect ideas reminds me the book of GoF design patterns.  In that book, the authors draw a map of all 23 patterns and their relationships.  The book Apprenticeship patterns draw lots of map to connect each pattern.

This is a great technology. In future I will draw more maps:

• “Draw your own map” (Page 47), draw a map of your career path.
• Draw the map of reading list

Agile meeting notes at Toronto JUG Dec 1, 2009

I attended the Toronto JUG meeting on December 1. This time it is about Agile, the presentato is Jack Milunsky from agilebuddy.com. His topic covered agile, SCURM and lean. 

 I put my notes here:

Adopting agile is hard

  Agile requires both bottom up and top down.

  Applying agile practices is easy, but the hard part is new mindset and new philosophy, which is quite different with traditional waterfall methodology

  Agile/Scrum is pervasive; it involves all different teams to change

Lean software technology

Jack spent lots of time on Lean.

Lean’s two pillars:

1.      Just-In-Time Flow

Eliminate inventory,

Do things in batches, which is similar with SCRUM

2.      Autonomation:

         Stop the line,

         Built-in reflex

Just In Time Flow

-          inventory is waste  => partial done software

-          Moving in Just in time

Uncover waste

       Focus on overall concept

       Focus on value

7 principles of lean software development

1.      Eliminate waste

Any partial done software is waste

2.      Build Quality in

            don’t test it in, prevent defect in the first place

            avoid creating defects

            stop the line, automation, unit test

 3.      create knowledge

           knowledge create process

           don’t lock down

 4.      Defer commitment

            “Planning is good, plans are bad”

 5.      Deliver fast

Lean focus on time

Don’t equate fast with hacking

Expose issues

Build quality in

Quality is the first priority

 6.      Respect people

Self organizing team

Trust over command and control

 7.      Optimize the whole

Mindset is important, not just practice

Transfer ownership

Focus on the whole value stream, the big picture

Focus on value, eliminate waste

Waste

·         Extra features

               Justify every feature, limit features

               Extra features are waste, > 60% are extra features.

·         Relearning

             Task switching drops the productivity

              Undocumented code

              No wiki

·         Handoff

         Transition point are waste point, knowledge degrades

          Delays

·         Defects

Increasing speed helps the absence of waste

        Cycle Time =  things in process / average completion rate

How to reduce the cycle time:

-          minimize the number of things in process

-          minimize the size of the things

-          Recommend small batches, which is similar as sprint in SCRUM

80% rule: if the task load is over 80%, the cost, defect rate increase dramatically

Agile in AgileBuddy

Agile buddy spends 20% time for refactoring, (which is very good, they know how important refactoring is, they do it deliberately, very nice!)

Discipline:  set the dial to 11( 80% rule)

Sprint length: 2 weeks

My thoughts

After the meeting, I talked to Jack, and we exchanged the idea, I believe that SCRUM mainly focuses on management side, it only focuses on what to do, but does not cover how to do, if you look at the SCRUM, there is no TDD, refactoring, pair programming, etc. I always have the question: do they need to be added in the SCRUM sprint practices? How? So I think SCRUM only is not enough, SCRUM should work with XP. So I asked Jack his idea about SCRUM vs. XP. He replied me that SCRUM only definitely not enough, it has to work with XP, because some of the XP practices are really fundamental, like TDD, refactoring. That what they are doing in agilebuddy.

I also told him my experience that how difficult to persuade my manager to apply agile in my company, how difficult to apply refactoring. He suggest me to organize a lunch and learn meeting, just watch this video by Ken Schwaber about SCRUM.

I don’t know if it is working. This meeting let think more about agile.Thanks Jack.

 You can visit Jack's blog at here.