Is it not cool to look like James Bond and attack every problem coming to us at runtime ? My answer is, it does not take us too far if we are not using the manuals for the tools we use unless it is extremely simple like a hammer and has only two steps to use it.

I some times wonder that if search engines had made people lazy to learn something from the grass roots up. This is not just an one off observation, I have known developers who thrive on search engines for everything from silly to complex ones. Of course, the search engines made a huge repository easily accessible to us; but not everything can be solved using them. If any one argues that they can get lots done just by intuition, analysis and net search then; why not we have technological marvels built by almost everyone.

We should not shy away from understanding the details or referring the manuals (It is not cool to act like James Bond). Only with a strong understanding of foundations we could go very far or tackle difficult situations with ease.

Richard P Gabriel introduces the term “habitability” in the context of software development. It is about how good is the code to navigate easily and understand what changes to make. He relates this one directly to a person living in a building. If the building is simple, well lighted and ventilated then it is very habitable one but if a building has been designed to win a awards then it might not be an easy to live in place. Some thing like how many people will choose their place of work to be Taj Mahal.

This topic evoked a mixed response in me as I was very much inclined to aesthetics and reduced number of lines. This was definitely food for thought as I had never thought about me being a builder and want to build dwellings such a way that it would be a habitable one. The next few days went by pondering over the thoughts again and also discussing that analogy with some peers. We all felt that if we programmers consider ourselves to be builders (coders) then our aim should be long term life and habitability of what we build.

How to know if the code is habitable or keep it habitable? My inference so far has been that not to treat any software as a finished product. Developers should consider that the system will always be under repair and should keep it in a constant repairable state. The idea might not get along very well with everyone, but so far any thing which I have coded and considered complete has been changed within a short period of time. That means there is nothing called a finished product, which can be related to leaving a semi-finished building to both engineers and dwellers to start using and making changes at the same time.

The more habitable a codebase is, more is the sense of ownership and responsibility. I will finish with a snippet from the book

When people lose the sense of responsibility for the environment they live in, and realize they are mere cogs in someone else’s machine, how can they feel any sense of identification with the community, or any sense of purpose there?

Before you begin reading  you must watch the short 45 second clip.

This video towards the end shows a hesitant thief mustering the courage to pick a pocket. On hearing the kid snap his finger he is disturbed and out of fear drops his idea and walks away, hence a crime has been prevented from happening. It was a coincidence that the thief thought that someone else was looking at him.

I loosely compare this to the Continuous Integration server where the build turns RED for the standards we set. Most of the bad parts while coding goes in inadvertently during the rush hour of check-ins. I usually observe the rush hour to be close to the end of the day and the next day, the refactoring is put into back burner which grows into tech debts and makes you repay at a later stage. Along with the other devs in the team we set some simple rules in the CI to fail the build. The rules are

• More than 12 lines in a method
• NPath complexity more than 4 in a method
• More than 4 lines of code copy pasted across any file

An intentional check in to avoid these rules and send in a bad code could not be prevented; but someone in a hurry or tired individual checking in gets a hint that code could be bad. A quick introspection will lead to corrective action and things could be addressed then and there instead of carrying a tech debt. The rules above are neither comprehensive nor does this guarantee awesome code, but it has caught me and others red handed when looking for quick gains. We are exploring more options to configure the CI to help us keep on our toes.