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I got a chance to walk on the Golden Gate bridge, could not stop admiring the beauty of the surrondings and the bridge. One can see what the bridge is subjected when taking a walk on this one, I arrived at one edge of the bridge when it was bright & sunny and by the time I reached the other end it was misty & foggy. It is constantly pounded by waves & high speed wind; and takes a lot of traffic. It left me curios to find the engineering behind it, after a while I stumbled on a documentary made by Nat Geo titled ‘Impossible bridges – Golden Gate’.

The engineers thought that it is impossible to build such a bridge because the water was too deep and winds were too fast and the distance is too long to cover. Even if built people wondered about how could it be sustained. Nat Geo’s documentary showed how the crew worked over the years to strengthen the bridge, rework the floor without disrupting much traffic flow. There were innovations like suspended traveling platforms to work on the cables. The bridge withstood an earthquake and was  strengthened to withstand stronger earthquakes. At the end of the documentary, the narrator mentions, he is sure that all parts of the bridge has been replaced at least twice but due to the engineers’ skill, people never knew that they are looking at a new bridge.

Golden Gate

The same holds good for long running software projects, many softwares over the course of time change so much internally based on the people working on it, which Richard Gabriel calls as Habitability in his book ‘Patterns of software architecture’. If the engineers who took over the maintenance of Golden Gate have not replaced the bridge over the course of time we would have a big heap of metal lying on the sea bed due to structural erosion. It is the same analogy that applies to software called ‘big ball of mud’ due to software rot.

The biggest reason given for software rot is that there is not enough time. Architecture is a long term concern, little beyond the learning horizon as mentioned by Peter Senge in his book ‘Fifth Discipline‘. We are not able to observe the effects of software architecture in the near term as there are very urgent business needs that keep coming up and they are never tangible like bridges; visualising them requires experience and skill. The advantage a software has is that it can be made more robust even after it has been built hastily.

How do we find that the architecture & design needs a revamp?

  • If the change to the software looks simple and trivial but takes a bafflingly disproportional amount of time to fix.
  • If it is difficult to visualise the code and explain to others in simple abstractions.
  • If a technology upgrade looks infeasible without a rewrite.
  • If there is too much dependency on individuals and context.

The revamp is not just about modular design & clean code but also adequate test coverage along with a robust continuous delivery mechanism similar to how the Golden Gate’s engineers used suspended traveling platforms to carry out their repair work on the cables without affecting traffic. A successful well maintained app that takes advantage of new technologies and changes hands would definitely been written many times over and no one would have noticed it.

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We are inept at perceiving the effects of debt, we grossly underestimate compounding factors and fall into a debt trap. Debt is tempting, it gives that edge to own things which is not possible now but only with the future effort that we can conveniently borrow and buy. There is a saying in Tamil, buying something in loan is like lighting a fire with borrowed hay but to repay it has to be paid in wood for same volume. If instant gratification takes priority then debt that needs to be repaid will hit us hard and bring us to a grinding halt. Corporates love debt, because with a lower cost of interest they will be able to create a high value output. This is where debt helps, if we are able to create something that is more valuable that can repay the debt with interest and still leave us with lots of money then debt is good.

Developers take debt analogy to code and create technical debt to get features fast to production, one major drawback is that most of us don’t understand monetary debt and its impacts well even though it can be quantified; but take decisions on technical debt which is difficult to quantify.

Let us have a look at an analogy, Neo has a trash can in his area that has to be cleared periodically. Clearing the trash can whether it contains little trash or full can of trash takes the same effort, so he prefers till the trash can fills up. The trash accumulates in a way that it doubles every day if not cleared. A new person Brio takes up the place of Neo, Neo explains that the first day only a gram of trash gets generated after clearing, but if left uncleared it doubles every day. He used to clear it every 10th day as it is around 500 grams by that time.

Brio observes that the trash piling up day to day is trivial to care about, around the tenth day he notices that trash is 500 grams and barely fills the can, he decides to come back 10 more days later forgetting the fact that it doubles. 10 days later what was a small can trash turns into an unmanageable heap of mess which is about 500 kilograms. The power of compounding is too easy to miss in the initial days, it will hit us hard who are used to linear maths.

Same is applicable for technical debts in an application. Tradeoff decisions have to be recorded and visited at frequent intervals to see if it is causing any harm than the convenience it provided. Technical debt also paves way for ‘Broken Windows’. Software development is a social activity, it will be very easy to make a broken window the new norm when code changes hands. Run your tech retrospectives; review code, design and architecture as an entire team at frequent intervals, that will help to manage technical debt better. Remember, it is not like corporate debt which is manageable by numbers.

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As a student getting a good pair of shoes was always a three way decision between cost vs comfort vs life of shoes. Often the comfort factor will be sacrificed to get a new pair and then the trouble starts, I will spend good enough time to adjust to the new pair. Not a single day will pass without the shoe bites bothering me, but the flip side is that I will take good care of my shoes. Whenever I pick it up to try to make any adjustments I also end up polishing the shoes. Once my feet got adjusted to the new shoes then I would stop giving a second thought about them, the last time I would have polished it was when I tried to make some adjustments to it. With less care given to it after it started fitting well, the shoe usually needed replacement well before its lifetime because of less care given to it.

The case is also similar to how people are treated professionally or personally, there is a tendency for people to devote attention to fix relationships with trouble makers and toxic people; but not give enough care to the ones who are fitting in to our sphere. There was an article from Forbes that people who stay at the same company for more than two years earn lesser than job hoppers whose performance was poor.

legs-434918_1280

Why does this happen? We are not consciously geared to this behaviour, most of the time there would be short term priorities that will kick in which will grab more of our time that needs fixing; resulting in a state where the ones that are working for us well aren’t the one getting the attention. The squeaky wheels gets the attention, the aching body part gets the balm, the biting shoe gets the polish. Eventually we will get more reactive, rely on noise and markers to effectively function which is a very expensive lifestyle instead of preempting something and making course corrections.

We should aim to keep things noise free; be it people, career or possessions. Getting things done was one book which helped in channeling the energy to find the list of things that I had in mind and keep track of them. The five step process described in the book helps to move the chaos into order. Learn to capture all that needs care, clarify if there is an action needed, organize and review the priorities periodically and do things as per your priorities. Keep it stress free, you will learn to care for your shoes even when it fits perfectly.