I have been working in software since 1999, writing on whatever fascinates me about the craft, with a special interest on sensible agile practices, testing and documentation.
AI can help us make sense of the essential complexity, acting as a true copilot while we can let it handle the most accidental complexity on autopilot.
The advantage of humans versus AI in development coincides with effectiveness versus efficiency. The first is fuzzy and subjective; the second non-controversial and data-driven.
Like learning a foreign language, you have to write original code if you want to master Java deeply. Make your examples fun, and life-like. They'll stick with you.
The OCP exam is a worthwhile investment, but that in itself doesn't make learning enjoyable or effective. You must work on your intrinsic motivation by making it fun.
Oracle's tough OCP 17 exam is about much more than Java knowledge. It's a sobering reminder of how dependent we have become on our favorite (AI) tools.
AI Coding assistants can produce code from written intent. What if it handled the reverse route too and produced useable documentation for legacy systems?
The industry has been infatuated with Scrum for too long and adopts it without question. But in a creative process, no prescriptive framework can be a suitable fit all the time.
More frequent deliveries reduce the risk of building the wrong thing, but sadly often at the expense of quality. That's the Agile compromise, and we had better face it with courage.
The productive path to establishing and maintaining effective test automation is not easy. In this post, explore well-intentioned yet harmful anti-patterns.
Excellent craftspeople delight customers, coworkers, bosses, and themselves. Don't believe there's something inferior about a career dedicated to coding.
The best way to make an important message stick is through a compelling story. That's how our brains work. To promote Agile best practices, we need stories in support as well as to the contrary.
We apply the Agile method as if a recipe for any project, but the product should determine the best method. Draw a fun analogy with different acting methods.
Studying for the Java OCP 17 exam brought home how much mental work we offload to our IDEs. Human memory is not about data storage. It's vital to creativity.
In this tutorial, see how Karate Netty, used for setting up a mock server in component tests, strikes a good balance between ease of use and feature richness.
In the days of server-side rendering, we needed the backend for GUI tests. Now, you can make true component tests with a fully mocked backend, more efficiently.
Non-technical stakeholders are not testers. The often ceremonial UAT stage cannot replace rigorous testing. Constant stakeholder involvement ensures we're building the right thing.
T-shaping makes cooperation necessary, with unavoidable interruptions and breaking of flow. Practicing clean code prevents questions from being asked in the first place.
In traditional unit testing, we set up our tests around edge cases. Jqwik validates against a whole range of possible inputs, making it better at catching regressions.
Committing to showcase new functionality every second Tuesday is an open invitation to cut corners. It creates a prototype mindset and increases technical debt.
The Agile Manifesto was drawn up by an all-male, predominantly American ad-hoc group suggesting how the rest of the global IT community should collaborate. Reason enough for a thorough reevaluation of their principles.
A developer-friendly approach to exporting public APIs is packaging DTOs and endpoint interfaces in an API jar file and using the Retrofit framework to create type-safe clients for integration testing.
Indeed, that’s the state of the art this moment, but there’s no telling how quickly it will get more sophisticated. It will not just be about stringing together code snippets based on a statistical model.
Understanding and editing generated source code will be a crucial skill in the coming years. And you always need to tell the machine what to write, which is the hardest part.
Yes indeed. For years I’ve been hearing that contemporary pop music all sounds the same, and now we have the science to back it up. People don’t value originality, it seems, or they just prefer what they know.
These component tests indeed require a Spring context (not always with an http server), but that is a one-time penalty for the entire suite. Tests aren’t noticeably slower than regular unit tests, although when measuring in millisecs they probably are. When you limit yourself to only testing the crucial scenarios that way, it is acceptable.
Thanks for your insights. The concepts of ‘unit’ and ‘integration’ are indeed confusing. Everything can be considered a unit when viewed within a hierarchy, and there is always integration of sorts at play.
In our Spring microservices landscape we focus on component tests, i.e. tests that consider a single deployable with its server runtime, but with all networked dependencies mocked, so they can run locally or in the pipeline. We don’t do integration tests.
Yes, developers are drawn to over-engineering like moths to a flame - with similar results. (funny analogy; not mine)
I read Essentialism too a couple years ago. In a similar vein, you might also enjoy Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Thanks for your insights and I agree that security testing calls for very specific skills.
What you call a ‘software bug’ I would prefer to call a functionality defect (caused by faulty coding). Security vulnerabilities can also be introduced by code, but even more so by the way the software is configured and deployed, which may be out of the original developers’ control. All the more reason why we can’t reasonably expect them to take responsibility for all aspects of security.
I’ve bookmarked this artice! Very nice overview. I’ve used many of them already over the years. If I may add to question 17 on languages and stacks: versions matter. If they’re still at Java 8 (or lower!), it screams unmaintainable legacy, mountains of technical debt or a CTO who doesnt see the point of keeping up with the state of the art. All are red flags.
Thanks for your insights! There was a time, not so long ago, that I wrote a single unit test class for every source class, mocking out every dependency, and ending up with tests consisting of 90% tedious ‘arrange’ sections. And then I wondered why refactoring was such a pain, because the tests were so tightly bound to implementation details.
It's not all bad news, though. A lot of really difficult stuff about low level concurrency has been removed since I did the SCJP 6 several years ago. Now it's discouraged to fiddle about with the Thread methods directly and use the (scheduled) executors instead. I do consider that progress.
Well, I still do a fair bit of pooh-poohing myself, especially about such nonsensical trick questions like a public method that has the same name as its class, but also a void return type. Hence it is not a constructor. Madness!
It’s certainly a double-edged sword. Perhaps modern photo cameras are also a good analogy: any photography course will advise you to turn off manual exposure and focus, and learn how the manual settings affect the picture. You learn a lot in the process.
Thanks for your comment. I don't think the problem is specific to younger developers. The tendency to rely less and less on our memory skills affects everybody, old and young. And it has far wider implications than coding.
Thanks for your comment. In my current project we also use Cypress and its own mechanism for faking backend responses, which is less hassle in that it doesn't involve starting a karate server, but is more handiwork in writing the responses.
I suppose an integration test focuses on the points of integration between two or more separately deployable components of a system. Testing with a real database or between microservices would be an example. It sits higher up in the test pyramid than a component test.
So true. People like Steve ‘Don’t make me think’ Krug and Jakob Nielsen have been stressing the importance of usability for decades. But too many sites that stand to gain (also financially) from a great user experience look like they were built by people with no interest or experience in the matter.
Thanks for your insights. I notice while working remote that interruptions often take shape in DM messages that have the immediacy of a phone call in people’s expectation, i.e. not asynchronous at all compared to an email. That’s problematic.
You mention two blocks of three hours uninterrupted focus. In my experience that’s hard to achieve (dreaded meetings), but also from a concentration/productivity point of view. An hour’s full focus with ten minute admin/coffee works bettrr for me.
Interesting and varied selection, although I do think the original Gang of Four book shows its age. Many previously ubiquitous patterns (e.g. decorator) are now semi-obsolete thanks to more powerful languaged like (suprise!) Scala.
Good points, and I think it is very telling that a JVM language like Scala, which is much more feature-rich, has not made much of a dent in Java. It can be infamous for its unreadability because of everything you are allowed to leave out if the compiler can infer it. Not the way to go.
Thanks for those helpful insights. Spring adds a lot of hidden surpises in this superficially simple feature. All the more reason to test these interactions properly and in detailed integration tests against a real database.
Fascinating read. I like the analogies with flying and language learning, which is of special interest to me, as I trained as a linguist. Becoming expert at a foreign language means you apply the rules of grammar intuitively and can no longer explain why a sentence is grammatical or not, just like native speakers. For expert programmers this means they must be able to explain their hunches well if they want to successfully coach juniors.
Great article, but I beg to differ with your claim that “No one writes unreadable code on purpose”. There’s a difference between deliberately writing unreadable code, which feels like an act of sabotage and indeed very few people do if they want to hold on to their job. But there’s wilful intent and there’s neglicence. Making yourself well understood (not just in code) is hard work that people often neglect. It’s a selfish omission because it wastes other people’s time. Being Dutch myself, English doesn’t come naturally. It took hard work.
I'm suddenly reminded of a developer colleague who was also a very proficient chess player. He said something similar. Professional players don't overlook obvious opportunities and pitfalls.
Thanks for your contribution. Yes, it's true that the Scrum guide leaves many details open. But sometimes illogical or counterproductive practices become so ingrained that I feel it necessary to remind people.
Thanks for this article. I think it's time to conclude that many of the common conceptions about agile are misguided and have turned into dogma: the over-emphasis on programming as a collective effort, the tedious sports analogies and the very limited actual team autonomy. What's left is going-through-the-motions ceremony.
Why still call it Agile? Sometimes a re-evaluation of ideas however constitutes a departure of principles that calls for a new name, not version two. Organizations coming to terms with their disappointment about old-school agile may not warm to the idea if all they expect is an upgrade.
CORE
Comments
Sep 02, 2023 · Jasper Sprengers
Indeed, that’s the state of the art this moment, but there’s no telling how quickly it will get more sophisticated. It will not just be about stringing together code snippets based on a statistical model.
Understanding and editing generated source code will be a crucial skill in the coming years. And you always need to tell the machine what to write, which is the hardest part.
Jul 27, 2023 · Jasper Sprengers
Yes indeed. For years I’ve been hearing that contemporary pop music all sounds the same, and now we have the science to back it up. People don’t value originality, it seems, or they just prefer what they know.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/26/taylor-swift-rules-the-airwaves-but-thats-bad-news-for-music
Jun 06, 2023 · Shai Almog
A likely gateway library to Scala ;-)
Apr 16, 2023 · Ted M. Young
These component tests indeed require a Spring context (not always with an http server), but that is a one-time penalty for the entire suite. Tests aren’t noticeably slower than regular unit tests, although when measuring in millisecs they probably are. When you limit yourself to only testing the crucial scenarios that way, it is acceptable.
Apr 14, 2023 · Ted M. Young
Thanks for your insights. The concepts of ‘unit’ and ‘integration’ are indeed confusing. Everything can be considered a unit when viewed within a hierarchy, and there is always integration of sorts at play.
In our Spring microservices landscape we focus on component tests, i.e. tests that consider a single deployable with its server runtime, but with all networked dependencies mocked, so they can run locally or in the pipeline. We don’t do integration tests.
Jan 26, 2023 · Jasper Sprengers
You over-estimate me :-)
I don't have a CS degree, so I have various holes in my abilities, maths being one of them.
Jan 16, 2023 · Otavio Santana
Yes, developers are drawn to over-engineering like moths to a flame - with similar results. (funny analogy; not mine)
I read Essentialism too a couple years ago. In a similar vein, you might also enjoy Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Jan 16, 2023 · Tanya Janca
Thanks for your insights and I agree that security testing calls for very specific skills.
What you call a ‘software bug’ I would prefer to call a functionality defect (caused by faulty coding). Security vulnerabilities can also be introduced by code, but even more so by the way the software is configured and deployed, which may be out of the original developers’ control. All the more reason why we can’t reasonably expect them to take responsibility for all aspects of security.
Nov 27, 2022 · Tomas Fernandez
I’ve bookmarked this artice! Very nice overview. I’ve used many of them already over the years. If I may add to question 17 on languages and stacks: versions matter. If they’re still at Java 8 (or lower!), it screams unmaintainable legacy, mountains of technical debt or a CTO who doesnt see the point of keeping up with the state of the art. All are red flags.
Nov 26, 2022 · Shai Almog
Thanks for your insights! There was a time, not so long ago, that I wrote a single unit test class for every source class, mocking out every dependency, and ending up with tests consisting of 90% tedious ‘arrange’ sections. And then I wondered why refactoring was such a pain, because the tests were so tightly bound to implementation details.
Oct 09, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
Thanks for your comment, but the link to the article is missing.
Sep 08, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
It's not all bad news, though. A lot of really difficult stuff about low level concurrency has been removed since I did the SCJP 6 several years ago. Now it's discouraged to fiddle about with the Thread methods directly and use the (scheduled) executors instead. I do consider that progress.
Sep 08, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
Well, I still do a fair bit of pooh-poohing myself, especially about such nonsensical trick questions like a public method that has the same name as its class, but also a void return type. Hence it is not a constructor. Madness!
Sep 08, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
I'll see when I get there ;-)
Sep 07, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
It’s certainly a double-edged sword. Perhaps modern photo cameras are also a good analogy: any photography course will advise you to turn off manual exposure and focus, and learn how the manual settings affect the picture. You learn a lot in the process.
Sep 01, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
Thanks for your comment. I don't think the problem is specific to younger developers. The tendency to rely less and less on our memory skills affects everybody, old and young. And it has far wider implications than coding.
Jun 03, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
Thanks for your comment. In my current project we also use Cypress and its own mechanism for faking backend responses, which is less hassle in that it doesn't involve starting a karate server, but is more handiwork in writing the responses.
I suppose an integration test focuses on the points of integration between two or more separately deployable components of a system. Testing with a real database or between microservices would be an example. It sits higher up in the test pyramid than a component test.
Feb 11, 2022 · Jasper Sprengers
Nine years later Joel wrote glowingly about the duct tape programmer:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/09/23/the-duct-tape-programmer/
Such a radical change of heart we call in Dutch “voortschrijdend inzicht”. ;-)
Jan 18, 2022 · Tyler Hawkins
So true. People like Steve ‘Don’t make me think’ Krug and Jakob Nielsen have been stressing the importance of usability for decades. But too many sites that stand to gain (also financially) from a great user experience look like they were built by people with no interest or experience in the matter.
Nov 06, 2021 · Alex Omeyer
Thanks for your insights. I notice while working remote that interruptions often take shape in DM messages that have the immediacy of a phone call in people’s expectation, i.e. not asynchronous at all compared to an email. That’s problematic.
You mention two blocks of three hours uninterrupted focus. In my experience that’s hard to achieve (dreaded meetings), but also from a concentration/productivity point of view. An hour’s full focus with ten minute admin/coffee works bettrr for me.
Nov 06, 2021 · Bhagyashree Nigade
Interesting and varied selection, although I do think the original Gang of Four book shows its age. Many previously ubiquitous patterns (e.g. decorator) are now semi-obsolete thanks to more powerful languaged like (suprise!) Scala.
Nov 01, 2021 · Sergiy Yevtushenko
I wouldn't claim that Scala isn't well thought-out, but there's definitely a deliberate design philosophy of brevity over readability.
Oct 31, 2021 · Sergiy Yevtushenko
Good points, and I think it is very telling that a JVM language like Scala, which is much more feature-rich, has not made much of a dent in Java. It can be infamous for its unreadability because of everything you are allowed to leave out if the compiler can infer it. Not the way to go.
Oct 22, 2021 · Alexander Kozhenkov
Thanks for those helpful insights. Spring adds a lot of hidden surpises in this superficially simple feature. All the more reason to test these interactions properly and in detailed integration tests against a real database.
Sep 23, 2021 · Tyler Hawkins
Fascinating read. I like the analogies with flying and language learning, which is of special interest to me, as I trained as a linguist. Becoming expert at a foreign language means you apply the rules of grammar intuitively and can no longer explain why a sentence is grammatical or not, just like native speakers. For expert programmers this means they must be able to explain their hunches well if they want to successfully coach juniors.
Sep 22, 2021 · Peter Connelly
Great article, but I beg to differ with your claim that “No one writes unreadable code on purpose”. There’s a difference between deliberately writing unreadable code, which feels like an act of sabotage and indeed very few people do if they want to hold on to their job. But there’s wilful intent and there’s neglicence. Making yourself well understood (not just in code) is hard work that people often neglect. It’s a selfish omission because it wastes other people’s time. Being Dutch myself, English doesn’t come naturally. It took hard work.
Sep 21, 2021 · Tyler Hawkins
I'm suddenly reminded of a developer colleague who was also a very proficient chess player. He said something similar. Professional players don't overlook obvious opportunities and pitfalls.
Sep 20, 2021 · Tyler Hawkins
Nice comparison! I always like original analogies. Yes, it's crazy how we trample on the low hanging fruit, pardon my metaphor.
Sep 05, 2021 · Jasper Sprengers
Thanks for your contribution. Yes, it's true that the Scrum guide leaves many details open. But sometimes illogical or counterproductive practices become so ingrained that I feel it necessary to remind people.
Aug 27, 2021 · Jasper Sprengers
Yes, I wish I could remove them myself. I'm the one getting the mails "Your article has received a comment" ;-)
Jul 23, 2021 · Cliff Berg
Thanks for this article. I think it's time to conclude that many of the common conceptions about agile are misguided and have turned into dogma: the over-emphasis on programming as a collective effort, the tedious sports analogies and the very limited actual team autonomy. What's left is going-through-the-motions ceremony.
Why still call it Agile? Sometimes a re-evaluation of ideas however constitutes a departure of principles that calls for a new name, not version two. Organizations coming to terms with their disappointment about old-school agile may not warm to the idea if all they expect is an upgrade.