engineering culture

Engineering CultureWhat is it? What makes it great?

Wednesday, October 9, 13

What I learnt in college

artificial intelligence graphics

java data structures

algorithms

calculus

C++

databasesnetworking

how to write code


...What I didn’t learn

how to write code *for a company*

communicationcode reviews

conventions release process

testing

post mortems

documentation onboarding


Different goals

College Company

Prove that we understand a concept or

mastered a skill.

1. Create a product that makes users happy.2. Create a codebase that’s maintainable and not fragile.3. Be intellectually excited by what we’re working on.4. Do it with limited time and resources. As fast and lean as possible.


That’s a lot to achieve...

1. Create a product that makes users happy.

2. Create a codebase that’s maintainable and not fragile.

3. Be intellectually excited by what we’re working on.

4. Do it with limited time and resources. As fast and lean as possible.

And that’s why culture matters.Wednesday, October 9, 13

Why should culture matter to you?


Are you about to enter the job market?

Don’t join a company just for their product. Join for their culture.


Are you a founding engineer?

You are shaping the culture for all the engineers that will come after you.

Make it a good one.


Are you in an established culture?

You still have the power to change the culture.

Nothing is set in stone.


My Experience


Joined when Google was X years old.

Spent 5 years in developer relations


Joined when Coursera was 5 months old.

1 year as Frontend Engineer


Joined when KA was 2 years old.

2 months (so far!) as engineer/educator.


What makes a culture?


The Engineering Lifecycle

Onboarding

Writing Code: * Understanding existing code * Planning your code * Writing consistent code * Testing your code * Improving your code * Releasing your code * Monitoring your code * Learning from bad code

while(1) { writeCode();}


Onboarding

Bad culture: Treats your first week as “initiation”.

Good culture: Values getting everyone over the beginners hump with as many resources as possible.


On-boardingMonday:Morning: - Talks: Overview, HR- Take Photos for Team Page

Lunch: Show & Tell

Afternoon:- Talk: Backend Architecture- Talk: Frontend Architecture- Talk: Code Review Process- Deploy first change together!- Meet your team

Tuesday:- Work on a small change- Deploy small change

Wednesday-Friday:- Pick first big project- Brainstorming meetings with designers- Begin working on it!


On-boarding

https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for-khan-employees/-new-employees-onboard-doc/developer-setup

Self-paced on-boarding:

On-demand help:




Understanding the current code

Bad culture: Expects everyone to just “figure it out.”

Good culture: Values over-communication about what the code does, and why it does it that way.


Comments

• from github coursera

• some funny comments

# Deprecated - this is true if the problem was done while in# context-switching topic mode, which has since been removed from the site.# TODO(benkomalo): Remove when all references are deadtopic_mode = db.BooleanProperty(indexed=False, default=False)

def consume_optional_goog_info(self, goog_user): """Assigns user information from Google to this UserData. Does not call put() on this entity and expects callers to do so.

Args: goog_user An instance of google.appengine.api.users.User Returns: whether or not fields were consumed and this entity was modified """

import feature_flags.infection # sad circular dependency fix :(

"""Holds UserData, UniqueUsername, NicknameIndex

UserData: database entity holding information about a single registered userUniqueUsername: database entity of usernames that've been set on profile pagesNicknameIndex: database entity allowing search for users by their nicknames"""

module

function

TODOs + deprecation

Sadness


High-level Docs

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/rewriting-django-admin-in-backbone.htmlhttp://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/03/rewriting-our-forums-with-backbone.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgZWMSDl0P8


http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/rewriting-django-admin-in-backbone.html

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/rewriting-django-admin-in-backbone.html

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/03/rewriting-our-forums-with-backbone.html

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/03/rewriting-our-forums-with-backbone.html

Writing consistent code

Bad culture: Doesn’t care how the code is written, as long as it works.

Good culture: Values a codebase where the code looks the same and seems to all belong together.


• google conventions

• google readability

• khan wiki

• enforced via hinters, recommended settings

https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for-developers/styleguide

>> git commit Linting...LINT OKAY: No lint problems

Guides

Tools

+

Language Style




Design Style

• coursera: common UI libraries

•

http://khanacademy.org/style

Guides Re-usable CSS+// Typography@baseFontSize: 13px;@baseFontFamily: MuseoSans300, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;@baseLineHeight: 22px;@textColor: #444;@lightTextColor: #898989;@fontSizeTiny: 11px;@fontSizeSmall: 12px;@fontSizeNormal: 14px;@fontSizeMedium: 16px;@fontSizeLarge: 18px;@fontSizeExtraLarge: 24px;@fontSizeHuge: 36px;

// Buttons@primaryButtonBackground: #89b908;@primaryButtonBorder: #76a005;@buttonTextColor: lighten(@grayDark, 15%);@buttonBorderRadius: 3px;




Best Practices

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/a-guide-to-writing-backbone-apps-at.htmlhttp://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/08/javascript-ui-library-design.html

Architecture

Tools/Libraries

APIs

...and tons more.


http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/a-guide-to-writing-backbone-apps-at.html




Writing consistent code

Do you follow standard conventions for every language in their stack?

Do you have your own conventions for the frameworks you use?


Testing your codeTesting your code

Bad culture: Expects you to write “safe” code, that’s magically free of bugs because you’re all so smart.

Good culture: Realizes that tests are the key to a stable and maintainable codebase.


Backend: Python/Django unit tests

Testing Code

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/06/testing-backbone-frontends.html

Frontend: Mocha/Chai/JSDom

Integration: Selenium*

Manual: QA Process, Engineer, and Team

Automated tests CI

+




Testing CodeTest education

Test engineershttp://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/01/introducing-testing-on-toilet.html

https://www.google.com/about/jobs/search/#!t=jo&jid=35182&


http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/01/introducing-testing-on-toilet.html

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/01/introducing-testing-on-toilet.html



Testing your codeTesting your code

Are there any tests?

What kind of tests?

How often are the tests run?

Is there a testing requirement for new features?

Is there a testing engineer or testing team?


Improving your code

Bad culture: Gives you no feedback on your code or gives you non-constructive criticism on your code.

Good culture: Recognizes that code reviews are a great way for everyone to learn from each other.


Code Reviews

http://phabricator.org/

>> arc diff>> arc land --onto master

Tools




Code Reviews

https://sites.google.com/a/khanacademy.org/forge/for-developers/code-review-policy

+ Docs




Improving your code

Are code reviews a part of the engineering process?

Are code reviews *required*?

What tool do you use for code reviews?


Releasing your code

Bad culture: Makes it hard to release code early and often.

Good culture: Enables everyone to release their code with minimal time and pain.


Release Process

http://betacs.pro/blog/2013/07/06/wayland/

8 minutes to deploy2 minutes to rollback




Releasing your code

How often is code deployed?

How fast is the process?

How fast is the rollback?

Who's in charge of a deploy?


Monitoring your code

Bad culture: Releases code without paying attention to how it fares in the wild.

Good culture: Recognizes the value of logging, alerts, and user feedback mechanisms to ensure code validity.


MonitoringBackend

monitoring+

Alerts


Monitoring

Frontend monitoring

User feedback alerts


Monitoring your code

Are backend and frontend errors monitored?

Are there user feedback mechanisms?

Are there smart alerts set up?


Learning from bad code

Bad culture: Sweeps mistakes under the rug, refusing to acknowledge or learn from them, or blames them on a bad coder.

Good culture: Realizes that mistakes are an opportunity for the *whole team* to learn and improve.


Post-Mortems

• Timeline of events• What went wrong?• What went right?• What specific action items would prevent this from happening in the future?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-appengine/p2QKJ0OSLc8

Don’t blame. Learn.




Post-Mortems

• Coding bugs: “The Mass Unenrollment”

• Server faults: “The Overloaded Database”

• Security issues: “Cross-site-scripting in PHP”

• Process flaws: “The Class Recyling Project”


Learning from your code

When bad decisions are made in code, how does the the team learn from them?


Now what?

Learn from others

Share with your team

Experiment

Share with others

“Team Geek” by Fitzpatrick and Collins-Sussman http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/what-to-look-for-in-software.html

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html


http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/what-to-look-for-in-software.html

http://blog.pamelafox.org/2013/07/what-to-look-for-in-software.html



The culture matters as much as the product.


THAR! Here be dragons!


Planning your code

Bad culture: Expects great code to emerge with no thought or collaboration.

Good culture: Values the process of planning code.


Design Docs

• google template?

• can happen in a jira discussion


Design Discussions

• whiteboard


engineering culture

Technology