denizen's coding diary

Deniz Engin Vehbi's Blog

[denizengin]

Re-Reading Clean Coder: Appendix A Tooling

Bug Counts

When issue-tracking tools are forced to track thousands of issues, then the word "tracking" loses meaning. They become "issue dumps"

Continuous Build

The team must simply keep the build working at all times. If the build fails, it should be a "stop presses" event and the team should meet to quickly resolve the issue. Under no circumstances should the failure be allowed to persist for a day or more.

The Details

In the 70s as teletypes behand to fade from use, operating systems like UNIX shortened the end-of-line sequence to simply '\n' . However operating systems like DOS, continued to use the '\r\n\' convention.

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Re-reading Clean Coder: Chapter 14 - Mentoring, Apprenticeship, and Craftsmanship

CRAFTSMANSHIP

A craftsman is someone who works quickly, but without rushing, who provides reasonable estimates and meets commitments. A craftsman knows when to say no, but tries hard to say yes. Craftsmanship is the mindset held by the craftsment. Craftsmenship is a meme that contains valies, disciplines, techniques, attitudes, and answers.

The craftsmanship meme is handed from one person to another. It is exchanged between peers.

CRAFTSMANSIP - CONVINCING PEOPLE

You can't convince people to be craftsmen. You make the meme observable, you act as a role model. Then just let the meme do the rest of the work.

[denizengin]

Re-reading Clean Coder: Chapter 6 - Practicing

It's not always wise to go that fast. Often it is better to slow down and just think

CODE KATAS

...speed depends on practice.We choose a repertoire of problem/solution pairs and execute them over and over again until we know them cold

...a programmer should know several different kata and practice them regularly so that they don't fade away from memory.

The Bowling Game

Prime Factors

Word Wrap

WASA

The two partners choose a kata, or a simple problem. If the partners choose a standard kata, then the outcome is known and the programmers are practicing and critiquing each other's keyboarding and mousing techniques, and how well they've memorized the kata.

RANDORI

With the screen projected on the wall, one person writes a test and then sits down. The next person makes the test pass and then writes the next test.

[denizengin]

Re-reading Clean Coder: Chapter 4 - Coding

Writer's Block

Sometimes the code just doesn't come...there is a very simple solution...Find a pair partner

Creative Input

I read a lot, and I read all kinds of material. I read material on software, politics, biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics and much more...The hours I spend away from my usual problems, while being actively stimulated by challenging and creative ideas, results in an almost irresistivle pressire to create something myself.

Define Done

You avoid the problem of false delivery by creating an idenpendent definition of done. The best way to do this is to have your business analyst and testers create automated acceptance tests that must pass before you can say that you are done...The tests should be understandable by the stakeholders and business people, and should be run frequently.

Help & Helping Others

Programming is so hard, in fact, it is beyond the capability of one person to do it well. No matter how skilled you are, you will certainly benefit from another programmer's thoughts and ideas.

Your work is not so important that you cannot lend some of your time to help others...a fresh perspective can be a profound catalyst for solving problems.

[denizengin]

Re-reading Clean Coder: Chapter 3 - Saying Yes

Committing with Discipline

Years of experience have taught us that breaking disciplines only slows us down.

[denizengin]

Re-reading Clean Coder: Chapter 1 - Professionalism

I first read The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin 5 years ago. I've decided to re-read The Clean Coder after 5 years, firstly as I think it is a classic and secondly because I've recommended it as a nice read to my team and I'd like to compare thoughts on each chapter.

Chapter 1 Professionalism

Taking Responsibility: take responsibility and tell that tests aren't completed and you are not prepared to ship software on time

QA Should find nothing

Automated QA Automated tests are a must to be able to change code without being afraid.

'Professional developers are so certain of their code and tests that they are maddeningly casual about making random, opportunistic changes'

Know your field: - Nassi Schneiderman chart - Tramp data - Conascence

'Our field is progressing quickly, yet if and while statements are the same as they were 50 years ago. Much has changed, much hasn't.'

List of things every software professional should be conversant with: - Design Patterns: 24 patterns in GOF book, working knowledge in POSA books. - Design principles: SOLID principles, component principles - Methods: XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Waterfall, Structured Analysis, Structured design - Disciplines: TDD, Object-Oriented design, Structured Programming, Continuous Integration, Pair programming - Artifacts: How to use various diagrams and flow charts

Continuous Learning and Practice

Code katas

Mentoring

Nothing will drive facts and values into your head faster and harder than having to communicate them to people you are responsible for.

Know your domain - Know enough about your domain to recognize and challenge specification errors.

Humility

A professional will not demean another for making a mistake, because he knows he may be the next to fail

[denizengin]

ECMASCRIPT2016

ES2016 Features

Array.prototype.includes replaces .indexOf

Unlike indexOf, it can search for NaN

const numbers = [1,2,3, NaN]; numbers.includes[NaN); //true

Exponentation operator

3 ** 4 === Math.pow(3,4);//true

[denizengin]

If you have a file which is stuck in a modified state despite getting reverted or stashed, the chances are the steps in the above screenshot from github help page will help you remove it from the change list. Screenshot is from below page:

https://help.github.com/articles/dealing-with-line-endings/

[denizengin]

This is a simple shell script Git hook that I wrote, which asks whether you've run the tests before the push attempt to master, and if the answer is no, then it runs the tests and on success continues with the push (on failure cancels push attempt).

[denizengin]

NPM update in windows

Running npm install -g npm is not enough to upgrade the version of npm on Windows.This npm package does the manual steps required for the update:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/npm-windows-upgrade

[denizengin]

Nuget Install-Package -An entry with the same key already exists Exception

If you’re trying to install a package and are getting “An entry with the same key already exists” exception make sure that you don’t have package sources pointing to the same source but with different name. The UI prevents users from adding the same nuget source multiple times with different names, but you may have run a powershell script to add the feeds.

[denizengin]

JavaScript Coding on an iPad

A couple of months ago, I was on a flight, reading a book on my tablet when I recalled that I wanted to experiment with tablet based productivity, and that I had installed a free iOS JavaScript editor for this purpose. There was about an hour and a half of flight time left, so there would be plenty of time to play around with the editor.

The editor is called JavaScript Anywhere and is freely available on the AppStore. Below are some points that summarise my learnings:

The editor has a very easy to use interface, with one tab each for CSS, JavaScript and HTML changes.

You can run your creations easily using the embedded browser.

There are also two other features which I had not had the chance to play around with in offline mode. Those are the ability to email the HTML, CSS and JS files as an attachment and the ability to import and reference external image and JS files.

I built a very quick front end for a Tic-tac-toe game(did not have time for writing AI opponent, but two humans can still play against each other). One thing to note is that the editor does not have the code formatting so you will need to manually maintain indentation(even more tedious to do manually on a tablet). 

It also doesn’t have any JavaScript linting capabilities so you’ll have to manually find that mistakenly added character in your script file.

Overall, JavaScript AnyWhere is a good free editor, and I’d recommend it for writing small apps on a tablet for fun.

The embedded browser window: 

[denizengin]

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

Frank Tibolt

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Here are a couple of pictures that I took while on holiday in my native North Cyprus in April 2015 using my DJI Phantom 2 Quadcopter and a GoProHero4 camera.

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One of my favourite hobbies is to take aerial photos and videos at scenic places. Here I was flying my DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter at Ardeche in South of France, when all of a sudden it was attacked by a huge eagle that came out of no where. Luckily both the Phantom(almost unscathed) and the eagle survived the attack. This happy ending sparked in me the idea to create a game about the incident. Over the coming months I’m going to make posts about creating a browser based games using JavaScript and HTML 5.

Here is a link to the first version of the game, which should work in all the latest browsers. http://www.denizengin.com/experiments/eagleattack/

[denizengin]

The approach of Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto after travelling 5 billion kilometres over 9 years is really exciting, as it shows the level of progress in human space technology. It was such a long journey that, Pluto which was classified as a planet when the space craft first launched has since then been re-categorised as a dwarf-planet after a space object larger than Pluto was discovered (Eris)

Looking forward to hearing about the scientific discoveries as well as finally getting to see the pictures of Pluto, as for decades, it was the only planet without a close up image.

[denizengin]

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth --- often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

Hypatia