I had to give up caffeine, fizzy drinks, and a few other pleasant things a few months back because a Doctor told me I am getting old (I had no idea!), and that has revealed some things about myself I wasn't entirely ready for. For one, I rely WAY to much on caffeine, and it wasn't easy to get it out of my system. I was irritable for a few days - like I usually feel when I take in too much caffeine. Secondly, without being able to just drink a cup of coffee (Bleh!!) or, better yet, a Doctor Pepper, to get me past the afternoon, I now have to manage my biology in an entirely different way. For one, I have to sleep (What a concept!), and when I hit a dip in the afternoon it's a reminder that I am not getting enough sleep, and correcting that is no small task. Gone are the late nights working after the kids go to bed in the solitude and serenity of the living room - a time which formerly was my most productive for working on open source projects and other things I didn't have to actively account for my time to anyone.
In my case, just stopping the caffeine was an unworkable solution - unless I am okay with my evening commute inevitably ending in a fatal accident due to exhaustion. I feel so much better not ingesting all the sugar and caffeine and other toxic crap that soft drinks and coffee bring (I've never cared for energy drinks), but it is more than just a change in drinking habits - it's really a change in how you manage your body.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Be Systematic
Years ago when my children had cousins who were into such things, I heard a cheer (ad nauseam) which went like this:
Facilitator: So, the widget is failing every day. Any ideas?
Suspicious Engineer #1: I suspect it is the hoozit of the whatzit.
Overconfident Engineer #1: Naw - it can't be that - the hoozit is finely-tuned.
Facilitator: Any other ideas?
Suspicious Engineer #2: What about the Ides of March? It has been known to cause problems before?
Overconfident Engineer #2: Not anything I have seen.
Self-proclaimed SME and overall dominant personality: I think it has to be muppets in the server room.
Facilitator: I'll bet you are right!
All: Let's go get those muppets!
The big problem here is the complete lack of discipline in testing conclusions and challenging assumptions. The facilitator did the whole team a disservice by allowing dominant personalities (I.E., those with who make the strongest assertions) to squelch good ideas just by saying it isn't likely to be true. A good facilitation of this sort of meeting should collect both pieces of information: the identification of the problem area, and the likelihood (priority, or rank) that it is the culprit.
Instead of just throwing ideas around like clay pigeons and letting people take shots at them, the facilitator should collect all ideas and rank them according to the order the team agrees on, then test each idea in order. This works not only on teams, but especially in individual work. I can't count how many times I have been told by an engineer that the problem was identified, as well as a fix, but once the fix was done they discovered that either (1) there was an additional problem that hadn't been identified, or (2) the analysis was wrong and the fix didn't work. This is terribly frustrating for a team - thinking a problem is fixed only to have it pop up again. It is even worse for the team when the fix is reported and deployed to production only to have another team (usually production support, or worse the business users) report the lack of fix back to the team.
In conclusion: follow the scientific method. Observe and analyze the situation, make a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, then commit to work. Challenge yourself. Don't believe your own conclusions (let alone others) until you can see it (as close as possible - some problems in computer science just can't be observed - such as a rare race condition).
Be, Aggressive!B-E, Aggressive!B-E AGG-R-E-SS-IVE Aggressive!
While being impressed that you could effectively get a 7-year old to spell 'Aggressive' by putting it into a catchy cheer, a parallel occurred to me from my own experiences.
Be, Systematic!Some background. In my career, one of the most frustrating things I have encountered happens when trying to brainstorm a problem. It usually goes something like this (in a group setting):
B-E, Systematic!
B-E Sys-t-e-matic Systematic!
Facilitator: So, the widget is failing every day. Any ideas?
Suspicious Engineer #1: I suspect it is the hoozit of the whatzit.
Overconfident Engineer #1: Naw - it can't be that - the hoozit is finely-tuned.
Facilitator: Any other ideas?
Suspicious Engineer #2: What about the Ides of March? It has been known to cause problems before?
Overconfident Engineer #2: Not anything I have seen.
Self-proclaimed SME and overall dominant personality: I think it has to be muppets in the server room.
Facilitator: I'll bet you are right!
All: Let's go get those muppets!
The big problem here is the complete lack of discipline in testing conclusions and challenging assumptions. The facilitator did the whole team a disservice by allowing dominant personalities (I.E., those with who make the strongest assertions) to squelch good ideas just by saying it isn't likely to be true. A good facilitation of this sort of meeting should collect both pieces of information: the identification of the problem area, and the likelihood (priority, or rank) that it is the culprit.
Instead of just throwing ideas around like clay pigeons and letting people take shots at them, the facilitator should collect all ideas and rank them according to the order the team agrees on, then test each idea in order. This works not only on teams, but especially in individual work. I can't count how many times I have been told by an engineer that the problem was identified, as well as a fix, but once the fix was done they discovered that either (1) there was an additional problem that hadn't been identified, or (2) the analysis was wrong and the fix didn't work. This is terribly frustrating for a team - thinking a problem is fixed only to have it pop up again. It is even worse for the team when the fix is reported and deployed to production only to have another team (usually production support, or worse the business users) report the lack of fix back to the team.
In conclusion: follow the scientific method. Observe and analyze the situation, make a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, then commit to work. Challenge yourself. Don't believe your own conclusions (let alone others) until you can see it (as close as possible - some problems in computer science just can't be observed - such as a rare race condition).
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Why you should do assertions the way I don't want to do them . . .
I have heard people say things like "In unit tests, each test should pass or fail for exactly one reason." Practically, this means there should only be one assertion per method. Yeah, right. I've done the math. That's a friggin' big pile of tests when you could have 20 assertions in one method! And who wants to think up that many good test names (because runtest0 will only go so far)? Am I right?
So, I coded a test like this, because there were multiple assertion validations with one condition, E.G.,
void testSomething()
{
stage(data);
assert(reason1);
assert(reason2);
...
}
That worked fine, and met my goal of being green and saving the planet by reducing the number of carbon-footprint bearing test methods. Then I refactored something that I knew would effect this code. Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of creative commenting just to get the crap fixed because the entire test wouldn't pass until all the assertions passed. What a pain.
So, I guess there is something to that after all . . .
So, I coded a test like this, because there were multiple assertion validations with one condition, E.G.,
void testSomething()
{
stage(data);
assert(reason1);
assert(reason2);
...
}
That worked fine, and met my goal of being green and saving the planet by reducing the number of carbon-footprint bearing test methods. Then I refactored something that I knew would effect this code. Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of creative commenting just to get the crap fixed because the entire test wouldn't pass until all the assertions passed. What a pain.
So, I guess there is something to that after all . . .
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