If you’ve been paying attention to LinkedIn, you’ve probably noticed that I am looking for a new job. If you are hiring and you would like to talk, shoot me an email.
When I get this new job and I have some income, I’m going to update my licenses for the following Linqpad and NCrunch.
LINQPad
I love this app. I first used this back during my tenure at Logica when we were working with StreamInsight. It’s a good app to use to be able to quickly test out chunks of C#, VB.NET, and F# code. The app is extensible so you can download other drivers that let you hook up to other SQL/NoSQL databases. Really cool for learning/prototyping code. Check out the website for more information: https://www.linqpad.net.
NCrunch
NCrunch is an automated concurrent testing for Visual Studio. What that means in English is that you can configure it to run your unit tests as you are typing your code. You can configure it to run the unit tests that are impacted by the changes you make so you aren’t running the entire suite of unit tests. This is very handy, especially if you have good code coverage. It even collects code coverage numbers and performance metrics. More information can be found on the website: https://www.ncrunch.net.
I have a job change coming up and I thought it would be a good idea to do an update to New High Score (update)! and New High Score! posts. Since those 2 posts I’ve had a couple work items that required updates to that monster class. Here is what the metrics look like now.
Maintainability Index
Cyclomatic Complexity
Depth of Inheritance
Class Coupling
Lines of Source Code
50
9487
2
1026
60516
Code metrics covering the class in aggregate.
Maintainability Index
Cyclomatic Complexity
Depth of Inheritance
Class Coupling
Lines of Source Code
5
122
37
822
0
215
48
1180
0
284
22
1237
Code metrics covering the 3 longest methods in the class.
I’m a big believer in leaving a code base better than you found it. I had a couple work items that required me to go in and refactor this monster class a bit. As a developer I feel a lot more comfortable making these kinds of changes (i.e. Strangler Fig design pattern) when I have the proper tools such as JetBrains ReSharper. The payoff for this change was that it allowed me to write unit tests to cover the part of the class that I needed to complete the work items. When you have a code base that is this convoluted, it’s nice to have a series of unit tests to proof that the changes you made to the code base work. This came in handy in a discussion with a QA guy. I was able to walk him through each one of the tests I had written. Turns out the issue was in a basic understanding of the work item the way it was written. However, my code worked correctly in the end and I could prove it.
I wasn’t the only one working on this code. There were at least 2 or 3 teams making changes to this code.
I came across an interesting article today. It’s called Why Older People Struggle In Programming Jobs written by Adam Nathaniel Davis. There are several sections to this article around dealing with office politics, tech churn, fanboys, and the cookie-cutter-ing of software.
One of the most soul-sucking trends in dev over the last decade-plus has been the constant effort to reduce programming to some sort of assembly line kinda process. Although I can understand the desire to refine a complex process into a simpler one, the end result of these efforts is that the programmers often end up being treated like… assembly line workers.
Adam Nathaniel Davis
This quote spoke to me because a few of my last few jobs have felt like this. It might have more to do with joining a team while a project is in flight as opposed to getting onboard before the project starts. When you come on to a team with a project already running, you are busy trying to learn the system that has been built, not make any breaking changes, and still deliver value for the client.
There are a bunch more interesting tidbits in this article and I think it’s definitely worth the time to give it a read.
You can add a README file to your repository to tell other people why your project is useful, what they can do with your project, and how they can use it.
Pretty good idea isn’t it? Why should we stop there?
When you are looking for a job, you give the potential employer a lot of information about who you are (SSN, education, marital status, background check, credit check, and any information they can glean from the interviews). There is a smaller amount of information coming back the other way, specifically about who your manager is. Normally, you hit the high points in the interview and then “stumble” over their intricacies while on the job. Do you ever wish your manager came with a README?
Now they can! Enter https://managerreadme.com/. I had a manager who included a link to his README in a batch of onboarding documentation. He covered several topics:
About Me
Team/Culture
Time Management
Communication
1:1s
My Commitments to You
My Expectations of You
Did it tell me everything I need to know to work with this person? No, but what a great way to help set expectations for new people on a software development team.
If you think this is a good idea, send your boss a link to https://managerreadme.com/ and tell them create a README to help your future teammates with their on-boarding.
My post from yesterday talked about the biggest class I have come across in my lifetime. Turns out, thanks to C#’s partial keyword, the class is even bigger. I have some code metrics from Visual Studio to share. Here they are:
Maintainability Index
Cyclomatic Complexity
Depth of Inheritance
Class Coupling
Lines of Source code
49
9529
2
3617
61900
Code metrics covering the class in aggregate.
Here are the metrics for the 3 longest methods in the class:
Maintainability Index
Cyclomatic Complexity
Depth of Inheritance
Class Coupling
Lines of Source code
0
152
77
786
0
215
62
1181
0
284
27
1238
Code metrics covering the 3 longest methods in the class.
The class itself has 1,314 methods! That is insane!
Yep, I think you are gonna have a hard time unit testing this monster.
Have you come across a bigger monstrosity? If so, leave a comment!
I was working with a new codebase today and I was working on wrapping some unit tests around a section of code in a class. While working, I realized I had come across the BIGGEST class I have ever seen in my life. So big in fact that Visual Studio’s IntelliSense was lagging.
The purpose behind unit testing is to help ensure the code you have written performs as expected. The running of unit tests can be more effective when it is automated on a developers machine and as part of your CI/CD pipeline. Automated unit tests can also take the load off of limited QA resources by letting them focus on higher level testing (i.e. integration testing, regression testing, and acceptance testing).
Nowadays, when I’m handed a new code base to work on, I treat it as suspect. I have no idea if the code base will even run. If it does run, how do I know that it runs correctly? Unit tests will help me determine what shape the code base is in.
In general, I follow the red-green-refactor approach when writing unit tests. I write my tests in this order typically:
Cover the happy paths through the code you are testing.
Cover the upper and lower ends of inputs to your code.
Cover any know edge cases known at the time.
As a follow on to this process, if and when bugs are reported against code that I’m maintaining, I can then write a unit test to reproduce the bug and it will also tell me when it is fixed satisfactorily.
What unit testing framework do you like the best and why?
xUnit.net hands down. xUnit.net requires fewer attributes to set your tests up (i.e. Fact and Theory). Another feature I think is neat is using a class’s constructor (w/o any attributes) as a setup method for your unit tests. This is great because it follows the way classes work naturally.
What other unit testing frameworks have you used?
I have used NUnit and Visual Studio Unit Testing Framework (aka MSTest). I prefer NUnit to MSTest though.
What is the right amount of code coverage?
If I have to give a number, I would say between 70% and 80%. I would have a higher number for code that is heavily used and relied upon by other parts of the solution.
How would you go about writing unit tests?
I like using TDD on more complicated/intricate code because it let’s you work your way through the code step by step. I prefer a Given-When-Then (GWT) approach over Arrange-Act-Assert (AAA). The GWT approach allows you to write more human-readable unit tests. The AAA approach works, but is not as easily readable. In general, writing clear and understandable code is the goal. Here are a couple links that talk about GWT vs AAA:
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. Code for readability.
John Woods
What other tools can be used to improve unit tests?
NCrunch – This tool is an automated concurrent testing tool for Visual Studio. It automatically runs your unit tests while you are working to reduce the amount of time it takes for the feedback loop.
JetBrains dotCover – This tool is similar to NCrunch but seems to run slower. However, it does tie in to ReSharper, dotPeek, dotTrace, and dotMemory which is handy when trying to look at performance issues.
Testing the wrong thing – Software development teams need to make sure they are writing unit tests to cover code that they have written.
Getting lost in setup hell – This occurs when the setup for your unit tests starts to become tedious and takes a lot of time to get right. Using a GWT style seems to help with this.
“I’ll just comment out this unit test to get things working so I can check in my changes.” – I think this is just developers being lazy and apathetic about the changes being made to the solution. It is not a behavior I would encourage on my software development team.
So that’s my current philosophy on unit testing. What do you think? Am I wrong? Did I miss something? Feel free to post a comment or send me an email.
If you are a powerlifter or weightlifter, you may be familar with the website loadingcharts.com. I came up with the idea in the late ’00s. It’s basically a connectionstrings.com but for powerlifting/weightlifting. Take a look and feel free to provide feedback! Thanks.
