Skip to content
Legacy Code Golden Master

Legacy Coderetreat: Part 3 – Golden Master

Golden Master on legacy code

Blog post series

This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see more sessions about legacy code.

Purpose

Whenever you start dealing with an existing software system you need to have a basic safety net. This basic safety net will make sure that whenever you change big things in the code, the changes will not affect the existing functionality. You can read more about this concept in the generic session Part 2 – From Nothing to System Tests.

As mentioned in the above entry, we want to start with some basic safety feature that will let us test the code in a generic way, focusing only on inputs and on outputs and without changing the production code. So we will treat the system as a black box (we do not care about the internal behaviour of the system, we care just about the whole system inputs and outputs) and we will test only the outputs for given inputs.

The Golden Master technique is very useful when a clear input and output is easy to obtain on the system level. There are some cases where the Golden Master technique can be applied with difficulty or where it cannot be applied at all. We will discuss these situations further as well.

golden-master-beatles-hey-jude-lp

In audio mastering, a golden master is a model disk used as a reference to create disks in the old vinyl industry. This disk was cut in metal and it would contain the sound transferred from a microphone (see here more details). In the software world we took this name and we started using it for a fixed reference of a system output, paired with a system input.

Solution Seeker Pair Programming Game

Pair-programming game: Solution Seeker

Solution Seeker

Blog post series

This blog post is part of a series about pair-programming games. To read about more please click see more sessions on pair-programming games. Solution Seeker is one of them.

Introduction

Start programming only when you have at least three solutions.

I heard about this concept when I started being a programmer. It made some sense then, and now it has even more sense. Especially for problems when we care about: scalability, performance, speed, security, etc.

Purposes:

  • You need to find a very good solution for a problem. But the “good” part here needs to be very well defined in advance. What do you seek for: security, speed, scalability, etc.
  • The domain of the problem might be known or not to you. If it is known, you just want to expand you knowledge and find lateral solutions.

Concept

The two pairs sit down at the table and are not allowed to write any code until:

  • they think about at least three possible ways of solving the problem
  • they note on paper or in a text file the solutions
  • every solution has a clear definition of how the goals (security, speed, etc.) are going to be measured in order to make sure the solution is right
  • the solutions are prioritized: the simplest and with best estimated results will be the first one
  • they start prototyping the first solution and measure its performance
  • only if the first solution does not fit the criteria, the second solution is prototyped
  • go on until one good solution is found.

This idea is extremely useful for finding solutions on hard problems or in areas like startups and research&development.

Solution Seeker
Solution Seeker

Pair-programming game: Farsight Navigator

Farsight Navigator Blog post series This blog post is part of a series about pair-programming games. To read about more please click see more sessions on pair-programming games. Purposes: Make experienced navigators become better Focus… 

Yes, And... Pair Programming Game

Pair-programming game: Yes, and…

Yes, and…

Blog post series

This blog post is part of a series about pair-programming games. To read about more please click see more sessions on pair-programming games.

Purposes:

  • Make the team members that always disagree try to build up on top of the ideas already presented.
  • Some members of your team are very stubborn and you want to show them that there could be other solutions than their own.
  • You want to improve solutions immediately when you see a smaller or larger improvement option.
  • You want beginners to feel they add value when pairing with more experienced people.

Concept

When working in pairs none of the pairs is allowed to delete the code of the other person. We are looking for a common solution, that both of the pairs will agree.

Why? Often I see that the more experienced programmers drive and give their solution as the best one (and sometimes as the only one). But even if you are not experienced, either with the specific language or framework or generally, you might have some good ideas for making the current solution better. In order to work on that attitude you can do ping-pong pairing with the rules Yes, and…

So the rules are:

  • none of the pairs can delete the code of the other.
  • at each step when switching from driver to navigator one needs to improve the existing solution and tests.
  • whenever one of the pairs tries to delete the code, the other needs to say “You should improve the existing one. Please go back and say Yes, and… I will do…“.
  • none of the pairs are not allowed to be angry on this request of not deleting code.
  • only unused code can be deleted, like for example after refactoring the code is not used any more. Both of the pairs must agree that the code can be deleted.

Sessions on this topic should be short, around 30-60 minutes. The first sessions should be supervised by a coach who will make sure the rules are understood and well respected. These sessions might become tiring, so make sure you choose a period of the day when you do not have other hard things to tackle.

Yes, and
Yes, and

Beginner's mind pair programming game

Pair-programming game: Beginner’s Mind

Beginner’s Mind

Blog post series

This blog post is part of a series about pair-programming games. To read about more please click see more sessions on pair-programming games.

Purposes:

  • You have very stubborn programmers in your team and you want to make his views softer.
  • To any problem, your team says there is only one solution, and that is their solution. You want to let them see there are always alternate solutions, which sometimes are better.
  • You had issues in the past with architectural or design decisions, just because the problem was not understood sufficiently.

Concept

A very experienced and neutral person, ideally an external technical coach, will pair with the team members one by one.
The rules are that:

  • the team member will be the driver
  • the technical coach will be the navigator
  • the technical coach is allowed to always ask beginner, even basic and stupid questions like “what are you doing”, “why are you doing this”, “tell me what is happening in this code”
  • the driver is not allowed to be angry by the beginner questions of the technical coach; the driver needs to always explain what is their current idea, how they can implement it and why they chose this path.

These sessions should have a specific, very clear topic. The technical coach needs to make sure that each member of the team understood the purpose.
The pair-programming session should not last more than 30-60 minutes as it is very tiring for both of the performers.

Beginner's mind
Beginner’s mind

Taking Baby Steps

Taking Baby Steps

I wrote a post on the history of Taking Baby Steps, you can read it here.

Now I would like to tell you more about the workshop and the technique itself. While coding, for me it is very important to be focused on one idea. Why? Because this is how programmer mistakes appear in the code; some people tell them bugs. The other thing I am interested in is to have an undo button for every change. This is why I want to commit every 1-2 minutes.

The rules are the following:

Steps

  1. Setup source control repository.

  2. Setup a timer for 2 minutes interval when you start.

  3. Write exactly one test

    1. If the timer rings and the test is red then revert and start over.

    2. If the test is green before timer rings then commit.

  4. Restart timer (no discussions in between timers)

  5. Refactor

    1. If the timer rings and the refactoring is not complete then revert and start over.

    2. If the refactoring is complete before the timer rings then commit.

  6. Restart the timer (no discussions in between timers)

  7. Go to 3.

  8. When session time is up delete the code.