This is the slide deck presented at the ACE! 2012 conference in Kraków in June 2012. If you joined the talk use the slides for reference. If you haven't seen the talk and have a chance to see it again, allow yourself to be surprised by skipping the slides for now ;)

1. Where Bad Code Comes From?
June 2012

2. I’m Marcin Floryan
http://marcin.flor yan.pl

3. You can find me at:
@mfloryan
Energized Work
Value, Flow, Quality

4. The ACE Conference:
#aceconf
This presentation:
#mfbadcode

5. Acceptance criteria
☐ You can give examples of different
sources of bad code
☐ You have identified one new
reason for bad code you didn’t pay
attention to before
☐ You will consider a way to tackle it

6. Any developers in the room?

7. Seen any bad code?

8. ?
Experienced
any bad code

10. ?
how bad can it get

11. Mariner 1
$18.5 million

12. Hartford Coliseum
$80 million

13. Ariane 5
$500 million

14. “
One
bug,
one
crash.
Of
all
the
careless
lines
of
code
this
one
may
stand
as
the
most
devastatingly efficient.
James Gleick

15. North America black-out
55 million people

16. “
To
err
is
human,
but
to
really
foul
things
up
you
need
a
computer.
Paul Ehrlich

17. Does your code resemble
this

18. or this…?

19. Building
the wrong thing

21. Building
the thing wrong

23. what
code
how

24. “
When
people
are
factored
in,
nothing
is
simple.
Ken Schwaber

25. what
how
code
who

27. “
A post-modern firm is rich
in information and relies
heavily on the daily choices
of its knowledgeable
employees.
Haridimos Tsoukas

28. Let’s go back in time

32. What’s that rustling
in the bushes?

34. F I G H T

35. You’re fed

36. What’s that rustling
in the bushes?

38. F L I
H T
G

39. You’re safe

40. back to
reality

41. How about that
RAG report?

42. Running late?

43. Add more people

44. Even more late *
*
Consult
the
Brooks
Law
for
details

45. How about that
RAG report?

46. Already over budget?

47. Let’s squeeze the testing

48. What do you mean
quality?

49. But it worked so well
for the 99% of the time
homo sapiens
have been around!

50. Do you ever fly?

51. ?
a novice pilot
or
an experienced captain

52. or perhaps even
head of the airline
safety program

53. Welcome aboard
KLM Flight 4805
Amsterdam to Las Palmas

54. A bomb in a flower shop
Las Palmas closed

55. Landing at Tenerife

56. law mandated rest
period looming

57. decision to re-fuel

58. and a T H I C K fog

59. KLM 747 crashes
into PanAm 747

60. Communication
misunderstandings
deadliest accident in
aviation history

61. Junior pilots any better?
remember Air France flight 447

62. so how about
Software
Development

63. ?
Ever worked
to a tight deadline

64. ?
Ever worked
on a high stakes project

65. ?
Ever worked
with senior people

66. meet Bob*
the architect
* Name changed to protect the innocent

67. “
Good, safe social interaction
is as necessary
to successful development
as good technical skills
Kent Beck

68. Difficult Conversations

69. Recognise
any of these…

70. How do we tell… our tester
you let all
these nasty
bugs through

71. How do we tell… a new developer
you don’t
know the
framework
well enough

72. How do we tell… project manager
we are not
resources

73. How do we tell… stakeholders
your
expectaAons
are
unrealisAc

74. How do we tell… operations
we
need
it
live
NOW

75. How do we tell… our client
I am unable
to add value
as a coach

76. we
DON’T.

77. instead

78. Time for
S O L U T I O N S

79. Ehm… no.
Not today.

80. I want you to learn
and we learn best
by doing

81. “
One must learn by doing the
thing; for though you think you
know it, you have no certainty,
until you try.
Sophocles

82. so instead

83. some
H O M E W O R K
for you

84. Your job
1. Find some bad code
2. Trace it back to a difficult
conversation
3. How could you have done it
differently?

85. My example
1. Data transfer via FTP upload of text
files is really clunky
2. That’s the way things are done around
here. We never challenged this.
3. Ask to understand rationale behind the
decision, present viable alternatives

86. Follow-Up
• Catch me, stop me, talk to me
• Contact me on twitter @mfloryan
• Submit and discuss your ideas
bit.ly/ace-homework

87. The Remember Slide
• We’re not optimised for writing
code
• Our mental software is mostly
legacy code
• We don’t talk to each other
• We hide our emotions

88. Bibliography

89. So Thank You
bit.ly/ace-bad-code

90. Resources
• Hartford Civic Center Arena Roof Collapse
http://www.eng.uab.edu/cee/faculty/ndelatte/case_studies_project/Hartford%20Civic%20Center/hartford.htm
• Mariner 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1
• Ariane 5
http://www.around.com/ariane.html
• KLM flight 4805
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
• Air France flight 447
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
• 2003 North America black-out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
• The Kludge Tweet
https://twitter.com/jmeydam/status/143405066571886592

91. Picture Credits
• The Bismuth Cristals based on “Wismut Kristall und 1cm3 Wuerfel” photo by Alchemist-hp from Wikimedia
Commons under FreeArt license
• FIGURE 02.2 The Manifesto for Agile Software Development” from flickr by Jurgen Appelo from flickr
licensed under Creative-Commons-by-2.0 license
• FIGURE 02.3 The Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship” from flickr by Jurgen Appelo from flickr licensed
under Creative-Commons-by-2.0 license
• ”bushes from flickr by Rupert Ganzer under Creative-Commons-by-nd-2.0 license
• ”Cottontail Rabbit from flickr by Ken Slade under Creative-Commons-by-nc-2.0 license
• “Lion” from flickr by Angela Huxham under Creative-Commons-by-nc-sa-2.0 license
• ”the first standup photo from flickr by Karthik Chandrasekariah under Creative-Commons-by-nc-2.0 license
• Traffic light stacking photo from flickr by fabi42 under Creative-Commons-by-nc-sa-2.0 license
• “Tenerife747s” picture from Wikimedia Commons by Anynobody under Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 license
• The Difficult Conversations picture is by Olaf Lewitz from XP Days Benelux 2012 available on G+
• The Coaching Dojo picture is from Olaf Lewitz (By Ole) at XP Days Benelux 2012 available on G+
The remaining pictures are used under the fair use policy or available in public domain.

92. License
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