All posts by Jon Reid
How to Improve Code Comments with Little Refactorings
Does your code have comments? Sometimes they’re helpful. But most of the time…
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As Jeff Atwood explains, code tells you how, comments tell you why. A well-placed code comment is a level above the code itself, explaining why something is written the way it is. But! We can express most comments as code, using well-named identifiers. The first edition of the Refactoring book called this Introduce Explaining Variable. Martin Fowler has since renamed that refactoring to Extract Variable.
How Many Code Smells Can You See in This Short Method?
It’s time for a quick exercise in code smells!
How many code smells do you see below?
The 3 Laws of TDD: Focus on One Thing at a Time
When I was first learning TDD, I’d try to get to the First Step (a failing test) by writing a fully-formed test. But it often took a lot fiddling to get that test to run and fail. Sometimes this was because the production code took several steps to set up. Sometimes it was because the test code wasn’t right.
One of the tricky parts of TDD is that we’re creating two streams of code in parallel: the test code, and the production code. Two things changing at the same time… that’s a hard thing to keep in your head!
My Crazy Plans for the New Year (Book Teaser)
Happy new year! It seems like good time for a Quality Coding retrospective. I also want to share some goals for 2018.
…Did someone say, “Are you writing a book?”
How to Mock Standalone Functions in Swift
We’ve looked at ways to mock methods in Swift. But what about standalone functions? Is there a way to mock them as well?
Yes! Not only can we mock Swift standalone functions, but we can do it without changing the call sites.
How to Use SwiftLint for Clean, Idiomatic Swift
We get feedback from the compiler. We get feedback from Test-Driven Development. But what sources of feedback lie in between?
This is where linters come in. A linter goes beyond “Does the code compile?” A linter answers questions like, “Is the code idiomatic? Is it stylistically clean? Are there any red flags?”
Incorrect TDD: What Can We Learn From It?
A paper published in 2013 about Test-Driven Development included the following diagram. Unfortunately, it gets some things wrong:
A tweet from Nat Pryce sparked discussion:
Grumpy request to academics: if you're going to publish ideas about how to improve TDD, get the original process right! pic.twitter.com/FaSU8CF6ol
— Nat Pryce (@natpryce) September 7, 2017
First, let me say I’m happy to see more studies on TDD. The thrust of this particular study is that TDD can be soft on negative tests. That is, maybe the code works for good data, but it’ll break on bad data.
TDD is a development discipline, so I’m all for learning more from traditional testing disciplines. I certainly don’t want to discourage folks from doing studies and writing papers.
But. Let’s first make sure we’re doing proper TDD, shall we? Otherwise any studies, especially studies about efficacy, may be flawed.
Where Will Jon Be in Fall 2017?
Do you enjoy conferences and workshops? Here’s my conference schedule for this fall:
Does the Single Responsibility Principle Lead to Bad Architecture?
The “Single Responsibility Principle” (SRP) sounds so noble. But I’m afraid it’s misunderstood and misapplied. Ask your teammates: “What is the Single Responsibility Principle?” Go ahead, ask them. Then ask if the SRP is a good thing or a bad thing. I’d bet many of them will say something like this: “In principle, it’s a good idea. But in practice, it’s overkill.”
On Twitter, Chris Eidhof pointed to an example of taking the Single Responsibility Principle too far. Specifically, Chris was unhappy with the argument that Singletons violate the SRP because, besides their main responsibility, they also manage their own life cycle:
This argument against singletons made me cringe (specifically, the SRP point): https://t.co/C9wVVnqHFs
— Chris (@chriseidhof) June 29, 2017
This led to a lively discussion. Many reacted against “over-architecture.” No doubt they experienced fragmented code that grew from over-zealous attempts at SRP.
I think that SRP isn’t just over-applied. It’s fundamentally misunderstood, even misquoted. The repeated misquotes perpetuate that misunderstanding.
Let’s see if we can clear things up, and point to a better way.
Please Take My 2017 Reader Survey
I want to ensure my platform does the best possible job of answering your needs and interests. And that means I need to know more about you. To do that, I’ve created my 2017 Reader Survey.
Would you please take a few minutes to fill out the survey? By doing so, you will ultimately be helping yourself. Why? Because you will be helping me create content even more interesting and relevant to you.
Your input is important to me. The survey is easy to fill out, and the results are completely anonymous. I can’t tell who said what. And you can finish in five minutes.
Yes, I’m Happy to Help. Take Me to the Survey!Thanks in advance for your help.