Steven J. wrote:
Honesty takes work, beyond simply speaking the truth.
Honesty also sometimes takes courage, a fact which I was reminded of
this past week. My journal entry is linked below. Boy am I looking
forward to the long weekend!
-TimK
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Saturday, September 3, 2005, at 1:44:09 PM, Tim King wrote:

Steven J. wrote:
>Honesty takes work, beyond simply speaking the truth.

Honesty also sometimes takes courage, a fact which I was reminded of
this past week. My journal entry is linked below. Boy am I looking
forward to the long weekend!

It seems to me that honesty ought not hurt that much, as a rule.
Were that to continue, I'd be very concerned.

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Will Turner: This is either madness or brilliance.
Captain Jack Sparrow: It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide.

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>

Thanks, Kay, for the kind words. I'm gratified that you enjoyed the
piece. I hope you think it had a happy ending.

Ron Jeffries wrote:
It seems to me that honesty ought not hurt that much, as a rule.
Were that to continue, I'd be very concerned.

Hi, Ron. I agree. And I hope I didn't take too much poetic license or
too indiscreetly wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm not too concerned with
the situation, as I've only been working there for three and a half
months. Mostly I think these are normal interpersonal communication
issues that need to be worked out. But I think the company responded
well overall in the situation. In particular, I was able to talk with my
manager's manager, one of the owners of this tiny company, about some of
the design and process challenges we're facing. (I'm sure these are
things he's already heard umpteen times.) I got to understand more about
where he wants to take the company, and I agree. I'm encouraged, though
emotionally exhausted. But that's me; I can get very passionate, very
invested, and I think that's an asset.

Chris Wheeler wrote:
Thanks for the experience. Given what you know now concerning the defect,
the refactoring, et al., what would you do differently in that situation to
have more people feel comfortable with your honesty?

That's a good question I've thought about, but I'm still not sure.

I think that improving communication between me and the other members of
the team, especially the team leader, will help. I've been in situations
where communication so-called (read: meetings) got in the way of real
work. Now I'm in the ironic opposite situation; everyone's so intent on
their work, we hardly ever talk. So my manager and I are going to meet
on a regular basis for a quick Scrum. I'm also going to start looking
for excuses to have scheduled design sessions with the other developers.

Fortunately, I am now working on another piece of legacy code, a huge
mess that someone has already partially modified to try to implement
something seemingly related to what I'm now working on. There are
if-statements interwoven through these 1000-line C++ files to inject
special behavior for certain models of downstream devices, one of which
is the device I'm trying to support, and I don't understand any of the
code. (And it's not because I'm dense.) of the other developers is
much more acquainted with this code, and I think she'll be happy to help
me. I don't know if we'll touch any of it, since I don't know if we need
to. Maybe I can show off my unit tests. The first thing I need to do is
communicate certain data from one object to another, and I can't figure
out at which point in this mess is the right place to do it.

I also have to admit, after this experience I'm never going to look at
legacy code quite the same. "You think /that's/ bad? Ha! I remember"
-TimK

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Tim King wrote:
Honesty also sometimes takes courage, a fact which I was reminded of
this past week. My journal entry is linked below. Boy am I looking
forward to the long weekend!

Tim,

Great entry. I know a lot of what you are going through with Legacy code
and being told to just make hacks to make it work. You helped kick me to
two realizations: I am a developer, and know what I'm doing (most of the
time), and when things demoralize other people I shouldn't let it get to me.

I especially relate with: "Sometimes I think my manager switches hats
without me realizing it." This has been a very common problem for me,
except my manager is the V.P. and there, for all common puposes, isn't
anyone above him.

It really is amazing how quickly you can switch from listening to
defensive strikes, especially when whatever is being said hits close to
home. I recently had a situation where a comment made to the whole group
felt like it was directed right at me. I responded in a defensive
manner, also in front of the whole group, which caused my manager to
response on the defensive. It could have been a very bad situation, but
luckily I (with the help of some other peers) was able to realize I was
in the wrong for striking in front of the group, and was able to step
back and realize that I'm there to produce quality software and
introduce good techniques. And I can only do that with a calm head and mind.

I sincerely hope things improve where you are, and I hope that the
improvements you are making take well. It sounds like you have a good
plan laid out in front of you, and I hope your fellow developers are as
open to it as you are.

Cory

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Cory Foy wrote:
>I know a lot of what you are going through with Legacy code
>and being told to just make hacks to make it work.

Thanks. Somehow, it's nice to know others are facing some of the same
things I am.

Today, I've been wrestling with a function that seems to be corrupting
my data. It's 208 lines long, including comments and whitespace, several
unused variable declarations, and a large comment block that has nothing
to do with the code. It also contains 2 giant while(!done) loops, takes
8 parameters, nests 5 levels deep, and uses the variable imgact and
tagend instead of idxBuf and idxEHeader. My analysis has indicated
that, yes, it harbors several bugs. But none of those bugs explain the
data corruption I'm seeing. Ugh.

BTW, I am now firmly convinced that while(!done) is a code smell. :-)

Steven J. wrote:
>It really is amazing how quickly you can switch from listening to
>defensive strikes

This is the sort of thing I was talking about training myself out
of, when I described learning to recognize "hot button" moments

I agree that's a great practice to get into. I'm still learning what my
hot buttons are and learning to manage these situations. Some things
definitely set me off. When in such a situation, it's best not to react.
That is, don't lash out, and don't give in. Rather, take a step back and
look at the big picture. You can also take steps to disarm the argument,
such as echoing back the other person's viewpoint, so he knows you heard
him, and agreeing as much as possible with him.

I've known three different people and all three
had a similar knack for needling you into a kneejerk response. All
three used different tactics to do this, but they tended to use it to
get you defending a case you had never consciously set out to make.

Another technique I've found useful: to think ahead of time about what
few things I want to accomplish in each encounter, and what things I
want not to happen. If I can, I take just ten seconds or so before a
meeting and think about these. That keeps me focused on the goal.

I think it can be very effective to own your mistakes in an
honest way

This is another excellent point. I think it lends an aire of credibility
if you can admit when you're wrong. I also think it's challenging.

>I sincerely hope things improve where you are, and I hope that the
>improvements you are making take well.

I think he's taken the first steps to cultivating trust and, in
the long run, the kind of professional atmosphere and attitude that I
find healthy.

I've definitely seen some indications of trust and respect from my peers
and from management. And I think I'm in a position where I can make a
difference. Behaving professionally seems to have generated this
opportunity. I also admit I'm both excited and nervous about it.

I should also make it clear that my manager, actually a team lead, is a
great guy and a good software engineer. He's already made great strides
establishing a work atmosphere conducive to good software, and he
supports the team well. Any difficulties are mine: I'm still learning
his communication patterns, how to hear him correctly. And anything I
wrote in my journal reflects merely my own reaction in one narrow
situation, not a verdict on my employer or any of my coworkers.
-TimK

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Jeffrey Fredrick wrote:
I was co-founder of a company a few years back and in the startup role
of VP/Mgr/Programmer, and it was very helpful for me when a couple of
the developers told me they had trouble following the hat changes. I
can tell you from that perspective that it is an easy thing to slip
into without even realizing it

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the feedback. I actually have talked with him about this,
that we desperately need him to be a manager, not a coder. He doesn't
think that is possible, but yet says he isn't under any time pressure to
complete certain projects that would cause him to have to spend most of
his time coding.

But I realized something the other day after talking with a person who
has been there since almost the beginning (but is our support person).
They don't want a great company. They don't want a great software shop.
They don't want great products. They want us to sell for a lot of money
in a short amount of time. Which is why, even though we do all custom
work, they coin it as a boxed product. And why we are planning to
outsource, even though we don't really have anything that needs
outsourcing.

But by being a "boxed product company who is already outsourcing" we
become a lot more valuable to some buyer.

Strange, really, but what can you do?

Cory

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