Shim it!

The lock on my front door was tough to turn.  I was afraid to turn the key too hard for fear of snapping it off.  I figured out that if I lifted the handle up that allowed the bolt to properly seat.  I noticed where the bolt was rubbing against the striker plate and the cut out in the door frame.  I bored out the opening in the wood slightly.  Minimal improvement, but still not satisfactory.  I tried moving the striker plate.  I didn’t want to force it too much since the screw holes would have to be filled and re-drilled for any major adjustment.  I even tried moving the locking mechanism to alter the angle of entry into the striker plate.  I did notice that the whole door seemed like it was a bit out of square with the frame.

Then it occurred to me to place a shim under one of the hinges on the door to adjust the whole door.  This worked!  The whole door is now square in the frame and it has a better seal with the gasket.  No daylight.

Software

Have you been tweaking, altering and adjusting parts of your system when a shim could be place in the right place and make the whole system work properly?  Perhaps, a strategically used adapter pattern would make the whole application easier to code?  Maybe some small tweak in the UI could lead to a more enjoyable experience through out the whole system?

Hot on the edges, raw in the middle

Use the microwave at 100% to cook or reheat and you can end up with something that is hot on the edges or the outside, yet raw in the middle.

However, if you utilize the manual settings, like 60% power level with more time you will find that the food is more evenly cooked.  Or better yet, consult the manual and use the correct settings for the food type and quantity.

In the software development processes, breathing time/thinking time is good.

100% full bore gets you done.  However, when you have time to think about the system you may experience remorse.  To extend the microwave analogy--perhaps,  you have a nice shiny UI but rotten messy code under the hood.  With an appropriate “cooking temperature” you’d have both a nice UI and good code under the hood.

Clean code motivates

I’m still dripping as I’m writing this.  (Okay, maybe not now, but when I did the voice memo recording I was!)  I’m just feeling very inspired and want to get this down in bits.

A lot of people talk about code smell, what it is, how to detect it and anti-patterns.  However, the thing that struck me today was this:  I was out mowing the yard.  The temperature was like a billion degrees, it was humid and I was mowing uphill no matter which way I turned!  So basically, it was hard work.  The thing that struck me was that I hit a section of air that smelled like a fragrant fabric softener.  It really perked me up.  I felt rejuvenated and mowed with more gusto.  I looked forward to returning to the portion of the yard that had the scent in the air.

The crossover

That got me thinking about code smell.  Besides code taking us more time to work through because of quality issues, there is also the issue that it smells!  It is repulsive, it is repugnant, it is de-motivating!  Who wants to go work on the smelly code?  No one wants to do it.  It is like being told to retrieve a book that is in a library that is located in the middle of a landfill.  No one wants to do that.  I think there is a psychological aspect of smelly code that should be considered.  That is, people want to stay away from stinky code.

On the flip side, are you excited when you get to go work in clean code?  Code that is well factored, code that uses patterns, code that you can understand, code that is a joy to work with.  I know that I can honestly say that if I have an application to work on and I know that it exhibits the qualities above, has a good design and has a reasonable amount of documentation I get excited about working on it.

Also, when I’m working in clean code I don’t want to be the one that dirties it up—regardless of who wrote it.

In conclusion, I would counsel that messy code besides having quality issues is also de-motivating.  Clean code, good smelling code is a joy to work with.  Strive for clean code.