 Baking (session?) cookies:
With thanks to Nigella!
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Pair programming is recognised as a way of writing great code, but can remote teams do it?
Absolutely! I did my entire Makers Academy course remotely and I paired remotely everyday. It definitely has some benefits over in-person pairing and I think it's a great way of working. If you haven't already, read my article 10 Tips for Great Pair Programming - this post assumes you've read it. The most important tips from that article? Swap driver/navigator roles every 25 minutes and listen more than you talk. The main difference with pairing remotely is that you have to be a bit more intentional about your communication. Here are my 5 tips for communicating well virtually. 1. Use your camera The major drawback of pairing is that you lose body language communication. You can in large part make up for this by turning on your camera and making sure your pair's camera is on. I like to use Zoom for pairing as the screenshare/camera work well together. 2. Check in with your pair Before you start working, make sure to ask your pair how they're doing - the same way you would in person. Maybe even have a virtual cup of coffee together in the morning! 3. Take good breaks This is one of the major benefits of working remotely - you're in your own space so on your breaks you can easily meditate/pop outside to the garden/do your laundry. 4. Create a dummy branch Swapping driver/navigator roles regularly is critical for healthy pairing. If you're concerned about pushing experimental code to git, create a dummy branch that you can push to in order to swap your possibly embarrassingly rudimentary code - then you can start using the real branch when you have passing tests. 5. Virtual high fives Totally a thing. The key is to slap the camera (almost) with one hand and slap your thigh with the other to get the sound. If you want a slightly ironic high five, you can facepalm at the same time. I had a great chat yesterday with the new Makers Academy remote cohort, discussing feeling inadequate, strategies for learning, how soon to send a CV to employers, and myriad other topics. This morning I found myself reflecting on how I used Makers not just to learn to code but to reset my life. A bit of background: my previous job was as a professional violinist. I was doing a lot of international touring, working as a freelancer. This was stressful because of the constant travel (between November 2016 - January 2017 I was in ten countries on 3 continents), the uncertainty of a freelance income, and the inability to plan downtime. The intense experience of Makers forced me to look at my life and understand where I received sustenance; to make sure I was getting enough sleep; to develop patterns that made me a good coder but also a joyful human being. So I decided to seize the opportunity to use my Makers experience to set healthier boundaries between my work and personal life.  Here are six things I did that helped transform my life: 1. Resist peer pressure to overwork I remember vividly coming back from a five-minute pomodoro break and asking my pair how his break had been. He said, ‘Oh it wasn’t much of a break - I spent the time researching.’ I’d gone into the garden and smelled some flowers. Guess which of us was better prepared for work? As the course went on, my cohort challenged each other to take healthier breaks: play music, take photos of bees, read Stack Overflow’s programmer jokes page.  2. Ask yourself what's the best thing you can do for your learning For me on the course, if it was during lunch or after 6pm, the answers included:
And one memorable morning my pair and I were too knackered to do the diagram workshop, so we did a hip-hop Bollywood dance workout instead. The answer to this question will be unique for everyone but it’s really important to ask it and understand that the answer may very well not be ‘write more code’! 3. Don’t compare yourself Rather than looking at what the other people in the course have done, ask yourself these two crucial questions:
A great way of being able to figure out the answer to those questions is to use the pomodoro technique and at the end of each pomo, write down what you did. You will be surprised and happy to realise how much you’ve learned, even as you’re struggling and frustrated.  4. Ask your coach or Dana if you’re worried about your progress One of the most difficult things for me, especially at the beginning of the course, was not having much awareness about what I didn't know and how I was progressing. Was I learning enough, not enough, pushing myself too hard? It’s impossible to know this as a newbie coder, but as adult beginners we are keenly aware of a vast skills chasm. So talk to your coach if you want to find out how you’re doing - but be warned, have specific ideas (i.e., I struggle with ‘attr_readers’ and ‘instantiating objects’). The act of having that conversation with yourself is in fact a really valuable part of learning, reducing the terror from ‘Oh my god, I don’t know anything’ to ‘Here are three specific things I don’t know and can I get some help learning them’. If you’ve done that and you’re still full of anxiety, talk to Dana. She will help - and not by patting you on the head and saying you’re great but actually by helping you discover these thoughts that are tearing you down and realising that the reality is a lot kinder. 5. Be kind to yourself I can’t say enough how brave you are for doing the Makers course. Taking three months off work is difficult! You will struggle. You will be frustrated. But that’s such a good thing - it means you are being stretched, that you’re growing. Lots of people talk about making big changes in their lives, but you’ve actually had the courage to go for it. Remember that, and be proud of yourself when the going gets rough.  6. Ask yourself what’s the bravest thing you can do in that moment
Maybe it’s meditating instead of smoking. Maybe it’s shutting off the computer and reaching out to a friend. Maybe it’s admitting your vulnerability. Maybe it’s asking the ‘dumb’ question that’s actually on everybody’s minds. Maybe it is writing more code! The answer will look different for everyone, and will change frequently. And if you're really comfortable with your pair, you can ask them this question too. And if you feel like sharing, tweet me at @FiddlersCode with #BraveMakers and let’s all celebrate these moments!  Pair programming is a hot topic these days - everyone knows it leads to better code - but it's also one of the most difficult things to do. At Makers Academy, where I learned to code, we only did pair programming , so here's my two cents worth of advice for being a great pair partner. For newbies to pairing, the most important is to understand the driver/navigator roles. The driver is the one typing the code, the navigator sits back and researches, proofreads, and maintains a global view of the code and the project's direction. 1. Recognise that pairing is hard Pairing is an intense relationship, summoning all your powers of ingenuity, communication, humour, and code. If you find it hard, or even just tiring, it's because it is hard and tiring sometimes. But you can also make it easy with the right person and the right set of practices. 2. Listen more than you speak I guarantee if your focus is on listening more than you speak, the result will probably be a 50/50 split. Most of us love to focus on our own ideas without really being present to the person next to us. Listen actively: listening doesn't mean you're silent but inattentive. It's a very powerful act requiring your full attention and presence to take in what the other person is giving you. Exception: if you are very quiet generally, you may in fact need try to speak more than you listen to get that 50/50 split.  3. Ask questions - don't command Bad: 'Assign that variable to equal "potato".' Good: 'What do you think that variable should point to?' Questions make your pair think and open a dialogue. Telling them the answer just makes you look superior. 4. Switch roles every 25 minutes This is probably the most important skill! It's easy to be a keyboard hog, and it becomes really annoying for your pair to have to request keyboard control. Every 25 minutes is a fair split, and it will keep you from getting in a rut. 5. Take regular breaks And make them good breaks! Play music, meditate, go into the garden...do NOT code without your partner in the breaks! You're in this together. 5. Give feedback Ouch. This is hard. But so worth it. Full disclosure: I'm bad at giving helpful and kind feedback, so I'm not going to offer much advice here. But a good one to start with is 1) what went well 2) what can we improve for next time  6. Don't pair 100% of the time Like I said, pairing is intense. You'll need some alone time to code so make sure you get that too. 7. Don't interrupt Interrupting == you weren't listening. I don't mean the kind of interruption that takes the other person's idea and enthusiastically expands on it. I mean the kind of interruption that abruptly changes the topic of conversation. This says that you don't value your pair's opinion. 8. Say yes In the time it takes to discuss whether it's worth trying something, you can often just do it. Saying yes creates a positive atmosphere where your pair is respected. Arguing about it is just, well, arguing. 9. Be mindful of your body language Is your back to your partner? Is your computer screen angled away? Do you never look at them? You want to create an atmosphere of inclusion so your pair feels respected and welcome to comment. 
10. Give high fives Just completed a mother of a mission? High five! You go through the lows together - make sure to celebrate the highs. Have some more suggestions for great pairing? Comment or sent a tweet my way! Keep your eyes peeled for a post on remote pairing! And want a little laugh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYBjVTMUQY0  Dear Future Makers, It’s the final day of my Makers experience and I’m on the train down to London for the careers fair, so I thought I’d chuck in my two cents about what you can do to make your Makers experience fantastic. Good luck, and Slack me - I like meeting people! Paula 10 Tips for Smashing your Makers Course 1. Boundaries I was a little worried when I read in a description of Makers students that you will “eat, breathe, and sleep code”. I’d done an intense undergrad where I didn’t sleep for four years, but I’m 30 now and I like to go to bed at 11pm. So I figured out pretty quick that in order to keep my sanity, I’d have to put strict boundaries in place. For me, this meant:
Your own boundaries may look different but I encourage you to make sure you spend time away from coding - your brain will need a rest and you’re still human and need fun time! 2. Meditate Or yoga or Alexander technique or gym or whatever it is you do to relax. Mindfulness meditation is a great way of settling your brain, clearing out all the crap and worries and stress. I meditated with a pair partner on the course - at 8:50am every morning we’d meditate (she in Paris, I in Cambridge) and send each other a meditation emoji when we’d finished. Talk to Dana if you need help getting started.  3. Work smart, not hard If you’re up until 2am working, you’re doing it wrong. Use the pomodoro technique (there’s a great Chrome extension) and don’t work for more than two pomos on a problem without asking for help. If you’re stuck, take a break, go for a walk, sleep on it…you’ll come back to it refreshed and the solution may magically pop into your mind. Also, don’t merge to master branches when you’re in a rush. This never ends well. 4. Diagram first The physical act of writing 100 lines of code takes five minutes. Making those lines of code work really well takes a lot more preparation. Especially if you’re working on a team, make sure you are on board with building the same thing. 5. Let go of your ego Full disclosure, this is the one I struggle with the most, so this advice is primarily directed toward me. Listen more than you talk. Ask yourself what’s best for your pair or team, not what’s best for you. As one of my best friends and I say to each other, “Isn’t it annoying when other people don’t do exactly what you want, in the way and time that would suit you?” It is annoying and you’re not alone. Acknowledge that annoyance, take a step back, breathe, remember that it’s only code and at the end of the day, people > code. And remember that Makers is the beginning, not the end of your coding journey. You’ll have plenty more chances to build all the features and use all the tech that you don’t get to on the course.  A final project standup - note the excellent bee art, a key theme in our work. 6. Communicate Running late to standup? Slack the team! Feeling ill and need to take a day off? Slack the team. Pipe burst in your kitchen and you almost get insanely flooded before figuring out how to turn off the water and your heart rate is way up and you haven’t had coffee? Slack the team. (This happened to me.) People are not mind readers (thankfully!). If you are ill/tired/stressed, they will not know and you may come across as uncaring when in fact you just need time off. Have the courage to communicate that. 7. Courage/vulnerability You’re going to be in an uncomfortable space of not knowing things. Especially if you’ve already been a working professional, you will be frustrated to be back at square one. I know I spent the first couple weeks on the course feeling like the village idiot, and thankfully our coach said that even if we were the absolute worst person on the course, we’d still get a job and do well. So be proud of yourself for having the courage to take this step, and walk into the vulnerability of being a beginner again. And if you need some company, read this blog from my first weekend on the course. 8. Do something tactile Colouring in, jigsaw puzzles, gardening, Play-Doh, Legos, music…find something creative that doesn’t involve looking at any screens and involves your body. 9. Blog Writing about your experience is a great way to reflect on your learning. And reflecting on your learning means analysing, learning from, and improving. If you’re not comfortable writing for the public, keep a private journal. It’s amazing to look back and see the things you struggled with a month ago are now second nature. 10. Have fun! Remember that you are spending three months of your life LEARNING HOW TO CODE!!!! How totally awesome is that?? Remind yourself of this! And make sure to check out the Stack Overflow page of programmer jokes. And have Zoom drinks with your cohort (‘the cohort that drinks together thinks together’, I like to say). Good luck on your Makers journey!    A friendlier type of nuking Our practice tech test for the past two days at Makers Academy was? Refactoring some hideous legacy code. See that method above? That SINGLE method that is over 40 lines long and bursting with nested if/else conditionals? Yep, that one. So we had to refactor it AND THEN add an additional item type. (Ever heard of a squint test? Screw up your eyes and just look at the layout - see all those arrows? A bad sign.) So this is what I did: 1. Wrote some tests There was one pre-existing test, which was pretty meaningless anyway. I had no idea what all this code was meant to do, nor did I have any intention of losing myself in a forest of nested conditionals. I read the specs and wrote tests to pass the specs. As luck would have it, the hideous nests actually did work, so eventually I had a full suite of tests and a good knowledge of what the program was designed to do. 2. Deleted everything in the update_quality method Nuking is not always the best method for refactoring, but that code was just irritating me. Luckily I had tests to guide me so I wasn't too worried about writing the code. 3. Googled 'ways to refactor nested conditionals' Came up with references to duck typing 4. Took a nap in the sunshine Seriously. I was tired at this point and knew I had to have a clear grasp of the design before moving forward. So a nap sounded good. 5. Read POODR's chapter on duck typing A lot. Also looked into inheritance but that seemed possibly messy. A big issue at this particular moment was the instruction that I wasn't allowed to change the item class. Duck typing was a great solution, but it would require changing the item class, which would apparently upset a goblin.  6. Damn the goblin, I'm writing well-designed code Once I made that decision, it was full steam ahead with TDD'd duck typing. I ran into some snafus about how I was storing and calling objects, but after a few hours had sorted those out and it was really simple. I ended up with several small classes and super-extensible code. I added the new feature on in about half an hour, complete with full testing. 7. Inheritance! At this point I felt I'd done enough original work to watch Sandi Metz's video on the Gilded Rose. In it, she mentioned that inheritance isn't always bad, as long as all of the subclasses share the behaviour of the superclass. So I thought, hey why not DRY this out a bit more and create a Product class which will contain the instantiation behaviour common to all the objects? Easy! 8. Satisfying the goblin On my way back from the gym later that day, I had an epiphany: I could in fact satisfy the absurd goblin by making the original Item class the superclass and having all the other classes inherit their behaviour! It meant a bit of name-switching (my product and item classes switched names, along with all attendant methods), and the one downside is I couldn't work out how to throw the errors upon instantiation without changing the item class, so the goblin's code has slightly less functionality. Still, I'm pretty damn happy with this duck typed, inherited code. You can check out the full code on my GitHub repo. It should be pretty self-explanatory! Master branch (with errors for instantiating with disallowed max/min quality) Item-class branch (item class totally unchanged from original repo) Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have more ideas on duck typing, inheritance, or just want to chat code. I'm friendly and I like meeting people!  The refactored method  So you've read my blogs Why TDD and 5 Steps to Good TDD and you think, that's great, makes a lot of sense.
Then it comes time to write the code and you have a tight deadline and testing just goes by the wayside. Sound familiar? So here are some good ways to motivate yourself and your team to actually practise TDD. 1. Have a test coverage race! Simplecov will record your unit test coverage for Ruby and I'm sure other frameworks have similar coverage units. Figure out an appropriate prize (honor? a pint? ice cream?) and give it to the person or team with the highest test coverage. Or if you're on your own, you choose the prize! 2. Understand that TDD is a form of delayed gratification You're balancing the immediate reward of having a feature to show off against the later and bigger reward of having a debuggable and extensible feature. It's in our nature to want immediate gratification but building the discipline to delay it means you'll end up with better features. Delayed gratification is a useful skill in many areas of life, so you definitely won't lose anything by strengthening that skill while programming. 3. Spend a week rigorously TDDing and find out if your code is actually better We humans aren't always great at accurately judging how we spend our time. TDD may seem slow, but why not actually measure your progress with it? Some ideas of things to track: how many bugs are deployed, average time spend solving each bug, how easily you can make changes and catch bugs. 4. Read research on TDD efficiency A quick Google search led me to quite a lot of papers on the efficiency of TDD. It's midnight, and I have only glanced at a few, but it's probably better to read those than spend a week tracking your own code (although sometimes the hands-on approach is best). In particular: "This study finds that Test-Driven Development provides a substantial improvement in code quality in the categories of cohesion, coupling, and code complexity." -Rod Hilton "We observed a significant increase in quality of the code (greater than two times) for projects developed using TDD compared to similar projects developed in the same organization in a non-TDD fashion." -T. Bhat Is there hard evidence of the ROI of unit testing? A very interesting Stack Overflow thread. 5. Sing the Ballad of RSpec Testing is definitely an epic adventure, so you need questing music to go along with it. I've written this ballad - apologies to those who test in other languages but I'm sure you'll still enjoy it. I'll record it at some point, and then you can really get into the testing groove. Read my other posts: Why TDD 5 Steps to Good TDD  In the first of three blog posts about TDD, I discussed why TDD is important.
In this post, I'll highlight five behaviours that will make your TDD much more effective. 1. Write the test first Obvious? Yes. Easy? No. But it's really important to make sure your test can fail (is red) - if it can't fail, then there's no point in writing it, because it's vacuous (won't tell you anything). Don't you dare write a single line of code before having a failing test! 2. Solve one error at a time It's tempting to jump ahead when you know what the next two steps should be. But get in the habit of being rigorously methodical about your test-solving. If you have a no-method error, define the method but don't let it do anything. Let the error messages guide you. Again - obvious but difficult to do. 3. Run your tests before committing to GitHub You never know what fun thing has broken and it's awfully embarrassing to push code up with failing tests. 4. Run your tests after pulling from GitHub In case your colleague or you in a previous life has forgotten step 3. 5. Don't refactor until you have a green test. This is a hard discipline, but it will save you hours. Trust me. I spent a couple hours in a red/refactor/red/red/red/red/red/red/red/red/red. Total waste of time. Never again. Read my other blog posts in this series: Why TDD Committing to TDD  It's week 9 at Makers, and I've noticed a recurrent theme: the importance of TDD (test-driven-development) and why people (i.e. me) struggle to get round to doing it. So I'm going to write three blogs on TDD addressing why TDD is important, how to do TDD, and possibly most importantly, how to motivate yourself (me) to do TDD better. So here are some questions about why programmers should bother with TDD: 1. Why not just write the code correctly in the first place? Definitely a good idea to write good code - but your code will inevitably change. Example: I wrote a rails app a few days ago and used the Devise gem for user authentication. I wanted to style the forms, so I changed some buttons to a link. I was proudly showing off my beautiful creation to a friend when the buttons stopped working (good tip: rails forms default to a POST request and you have to specify if you want GET - I hadn't done this, which is why my code broke). If I'd had a feature test, I would have known right away that my routes had broken when I changed the form. 2. Doesn't writing tests takes away time from adding features? But it gives you the time back in debugging those features later. Even if you manually inspect your site (for example), you still have to reload the server (depending on which server you're using), possibly clear the cache, and run the tests yourself. Much easier to run RSpec (or whatever testing framework you use) and have it tell you the exact line of the error, and possibly even how to solve it. 3. Wouldn't you rather be writing features? Doing good work means sometimes you have to do something that's less fun in pursuit of an overall goal. Violinists play scales, athletes do something athletic, programmers write tests. It's part of the less glamorous part of our job that means we are way better at our job. And we want to be kickass programmers, right? 4. But doesn't writing tests just make the whole process slower? Not so much slower as break it down into smaller steps! The idea of sitting down at a machine, typing furiously for six hours, and emerging with your keyboard smoking and an amazing app fully developed is really sexy. But even if you manage to do that perfectly, your app will have to change - and possibly even be changed by someone else who may not have your brilliance and depth. Much better to code in tiny pieces, each new bit being tested so you can immediately pinpoint problems. 5. Is there anything else great about tests? Yeah! They satisfy the XP value of communication: tests tell the next programmer maintaining your code what exactly it's meant to do. I'm struck by how often my coach asks to see my tests - it's a quick way to get an overview of what the code is meant to do. Also very importantly, tests demonstrate that you've accounted for edge cases - so think of them as an opportunity to show off how expansive your thinking is. Ok, so that's it for post one. Check out the next one: 5 Steps to Good TDD   Ok, so what's a favicon? Possibly my new favourite little bit of code, favicons are the images that display in browser tabs.  You probably recognise most of those icons, right? They're a quick and easy visual way for a user to orient herself while using the browser. So I present to you my guide to adding a favicon to a Rails app. Step 1: Find the image or logo you want to use as a favicon. Save it to your rails project's public folder.  Step 2: Go to your favourite favicon generator online - I quite like Favicomatic. Upload your image and save it as favicomatic.zip (or whatever yours is called) to your public folder. (I already had a favicomatic.zip folder, which is why mine has the (2)).  Step 3: Grab the HTML code from the website (there are two sizes to choose from) and paste it to your application.html.erb file, just under the title.  Step 4: Open the favicon folder (here renamed from favicomatic(2) to favicon.zip) in the finder so you can unzip it. It'll appear as an unzipped folder in your project. Delete the zipped version. Note that the folder MUST be called favicon for Rails to find it. Step 5: Refresh your browser and admire your favicon!  PS Hawk-eyed readers will notice that I named this 'starfleet logo' in Step 1. Apparently I am unable to tell Star Trek and NASA apart.
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Paula MuldoonAfter a successful career touring the world as a violinist, I am now learning to code with Makers Academy! Archives
October 2017
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