Figure: How do you specify this machine?
As you may have read in my previous blog post: On the road to BDD… Or… to see the light, I am dabbling more and more into the ATDD / BDD world.
These are my impressions from Machine.Specifications.
BTW: Gread video from JP Boodhoo about Getting up and running with MSpec
Figure: CopyCat – A big fat cat walking and waltzing the internetz
I am a pretty normal geek. At least I think I am normal and a geek. I see geeks as people (yes really) that want to play with things, discover new things and build things. When geeks play with things they discover new things quite often.
(Similar story heard and “adapted” from Scott Hanselman)
After I ‘ve discovered something I want to scream it out to someone:
“Look at this dude!! Isn’t that awesome???”
A normal reaction that you get from a non-geek:
“Wow… Is this showing the weather in form of colors that you could just get by watching out the window?”
This is the pattern for the reaction that you normally get
“Wow… Is this <something> that does <somethingUselessAtBeginning> that you could just get by doing <somethingElse>?”
If you are a regular reader of this little blog in the middle of the internet, you might have realized that I am keen on “all things testing”. This is just a little experience report on my journey to better testing and getting everyone involved in the discussion about what we are building with our codez.
Figure: Everyone get together and collaborate
I just came across a blog post from Ian about GhostDoc and Atominerr and had to share my thoughts here about those tools
Figure: Useless but fun!
Figure: You don't need to dig deep to find smelly code
I just found this nice piece of TSQL that I came across in a 500 line stored procedure on my current project.
Following up the blog post about some major issues in the usage of the datacontext I dig into more details here.
Here is the initial blog post with an intro and the whole code
Lets start to look at the methods itself, starting with: "UpdateEmployeePositionHistory".
Alright! Lets have a look at this nice piece of code that I posted before. 
I just came across some code where I needed to fix a couple of issues in. Since I am a strong proponent of continuous improvement and refactoring I thought I blog about this good example.
*Updated* 3 April 2011: Update how to enable Intellisense for code contracts
There are more and more articles coming out about Code Contracts. Some of them talk only about input validation and miss the goal of Code Contracts. What else can we do with Code Contracts?
Figure: Real world validation message
Microsoft DevLabs says: Code Contracts express coding assumptions
![question_and_answer[5]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz7bpJN7as03Uh4cegZfmVlRCYTTM98V4ULrEUlK8HFEQgPVOEMFxRVOFAjut2V7QCXmi5Jt7tRnZiCPtrSlrG5cikvG5b9fpRaVGxLZu63UlR1_MaiHY-MwTIQPprbwee3ERiCg/?imgmax=800 "question_and_answer[5]"){kind=small}
<Thoughts about Clean Code Development>
As a Clean Code Developer we should follow the "Boy Scout Rule", that says: "Check-in our code a little cleaner than when we checked it out".
Additionally to the "Boy Scout Rule", Uncle Bob spoke about Sushi chefs, that clean up their work as they go and do their work.
I call this the "Sushi Chef rule: Clean up as you do".
Figure: Sushi Chef Rule: "Clean up as you do"
The problem with that in my eyes is, that this "rule" is not applicable in Software development.
As a developer we want to get the job done as quickly as possible. "Hacking away / getting something" done and "cleaning up" are 2 different modes on how we work and think. Switching between these 2 modes is not easy, because its almost a context switch, and switching contexts is bad. I actually tempt to think: "I fix that up later" and add a couple of "TODO" as I hack away…
Additionally when we want to get something done, we need to "get into the zone". This "zone mode" is different to the cleaning up mode, where we browse and read code.
I thought about this and the "Broken window theory" a little bit more and found another analogy: Hotels.
If you stay in a hotel for a week, there is some cleaning personnel that clean your room every day.
The reason is the "Broken window theory". A little mess attracts more mess, and gets a big pile of mess over time.
That lead me to the "Hotel room rule"
Figure: Hotel Room Rule: "Let someone else clean up your code every day"
What do you think?
Thanks everyone for attending. I enjoyed last night… Special Thanks to Giordano Scalzo's whose slide I used as a base for my talk, and with who I had interesting conversations about ideas and slides…
Make sure to check the list of "good code attributes" at the end of the post. That's the list that we came up with, during the user group…
Content
PS
If you are able to apply the "Hotel Room Rule" in your projects let me know!
Figure: Hotel Room Rule: "Let someone else clean up your code every day"
string errormsg;
User user;
bool success = AuthenticationService.GetUser(usercode, out user, out errormsg);
Figure: Bad example - We should avoid "out" parameters, because it means we return 2 objects from a method.
Note: I don't care about measuring performance on these 2 operations because we don't use them in a tight loop.
For me its all about readability and robustness of my code.
Look at these code samples doing some type casts
public ListFigure: 1 code sample with untyped datatablesGetJobRulesFromPhysicalDB(DataTable renewedRules) { if (renewedRules.Rows.Count > 0 && CurrentJob.JobRules.Count > 0) { foreach (DataRow row in renewedRules.Rows) { foreach (JobRule item in CurrentJob.JobRules) { if ((Guid)row["RuleID"] == item.RuleId) { item.UpdateRule(CurrentJob.RuleRepository.GetNewRuleByRuleId(item.RuleId)); break; } } } } return CurrentJob.JobRules; }
private void AMControlMouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
var auc = (AMUserControl)sender;
var aucSessionId = auc.myUserControl.Tag;
// snip snip snip
}
Figure: Event handler in Silverlight
I see this VERY often, so I had to blog about it.
See this sample interface with some method signatures
void CalculateSalary(string environment, string emloyeeName, ...) void GetListOfSubEmployees(string environment, string emloyeeName, ...) void CalculateBonusPerYear(string environment, string emloyeeName, ...) void GetOrderRegion(string environment, string emloyeeName, ...) void UpdateEmployee(string environment, string emloyeeName, ...) void MergePolicy(string emloyeeName, string environment, ...)
As you can see all methods have some common parameters (string environment, string emloyeeName).
1. Read the following code and try to understand what it tries to achieve
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("User ")) { FormView1.FindControl("noteRow").Visible = true; FormView1.FindControl("RequiredFieldValidator4").Visible = false; // TODO: Fix this - What if Action is 2nd parameter in URL if (Request.Path.Contains(@"ClientProfile.aspx?Action=Add")) { FormView1.FindControl("thLoginID").Visible = true; FormView1.FindControl("tdLoginID").Visible = true; FormView1.FindControl("txtLoginID").Visible = true; } } else { FormView1.FindControl("noteRow").Visible = false; } if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("Administrator")) { if (!Request.Path.Contains(@"/AdministratorProfile.aspx")) { if (!Request.Path.Contains(@"/Profile.aspx")) { FormView1.FindControl("txtLoginID").Visible = false; FormView1.FindControl("lblLoginID").Visible = false; -- Snip snip snip – more controls are hidden or shown -- -- if (Request.Path.Contains(@"/UserProfile.aspx") && HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("User") && (Request.QueryString["Action"] == null || Request.QueryString["Action"].Equals("New"))) { FormView1.FindControl("thLoginID").Visible = true; FormView1.FindControl("lblLoginID").Visible = true; -- Snip snip snip – more controls are hidden or shown -- -- } else { FormView1.FindControl("thLoginID").Visible = false; FormView1.FindControl("lblLoginID").Visible = false; -- Snip snip snip – more controls are hidden or shown -- -- } } else { FormView1.FindControl("thDateRegistered").Visible = false; FormView1.FindControl("tdDateRegistered").Visible = false; -- Snip snip snip – more controls are hidden or shown -- -- } } else if (Request.Path.Contains(@"/ReaderProfile.aspx")) { FormView1.FindControl("tdAdviser").Visible = false; FormView1.FindControl("thAdviser").Visible = false; -- Snip snip snip – more controls are hidden or shown -- -- } } else if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("Administrator")) { -- Snip snip snip – this code is 130 lines long... -- --
2. Now try to image you have to fix something in this mess.
3. Or try to add a feature for a certain user.
The only way this code is developed, is
My main problem here is the combination of
In particular
How can the next dev work out when we enter in which branch?
My suggestions:
BTW: This code broke at least two principles
I am curious so I paste this code to VS 2010 and run “Analyze”, “Code Metrics”
As a quick test I extract a piece of code from the Page_Load to another method and expect the Cyclomatic Complexity to go down and the Maintainability to go up.
Extract til you drop, but with meaningful names!!!
In my opinion readability is the most important attribute of code.
Good code should be easy to read.
That makes code easy to understand, maintain and REUSE.
Ignore the meaning of the code but look at the layout... What would you prefer?
if (myTrueValue) myFirstTempVariable = 1; if (!myTestStatement) mySecondTempVariable = 0; if (mySecondTestStatement) myThirdTempVariable = 0; if (!myFourthTestStatement) mySecondTempVariable = 1;Hard to read
if (myTrueValue == true) myFirstTempVariable = 1; if (myTestStatement == false) mySecondTempVariable = 0; if (mySecondTestStatement == true) myThirdTempVariable = 0; if (myFourthTestStatement == false) mySecondTempVariable = 1;GOOD: Already much easier to read
if (true == myTrueValue) myFirstTempVariable = 1; if (false == myTestStatement) mySecondTempVariable = 0; if (true == mySecondTestStatement) myThirdTempVariable = 0; if (false == myFourthTestStatement) mySecondTempVariable = 1;GOOD: What about this? Already much easier to read??