DDevelopment & Design

Mentoring in Software Craftsmanship

Maria Diaconu and  Alexandru Bolboaca are both strong supporters of Software Craftsmanship and Agile movements in Romania, with years of experience as developers, leaders, architects, managers and instructors. On their lecture at Agile Central Eur…Maria Diaconu and  Alexandru Bolboaca are both strong supporters of Software Craftsmanship and Agile movements in Romania, with years of experience as developers, leaders, architects, managers and instructors. On their lecture at Agile Central Eur…

Maria Diaconu and  Alexandru Bolboaca are both strong supporters of Software Craftsmanship and Agile movements in Romania, with years of experience as developers, leaders, architects, managers and instructors. On their lecture at Agile Central Europe Conference they were talking about Software  Craftsmanship movement. While Sobótka at 4Developers was showing what Craftsmanship from the code point of view is, our guests from Romania gave us a brief introduction into the process of becoming a Craftsman.

The fact, that university education for programmers doesn’t give us skills suitable for professional environment is old news (at least in Poland and Romania). While steps are being taken in the right direction, it’s going to take a while to get there, and that’s where  Software Craftsmanship movement comes in handy.

The core concept of the presentation, was that if you want to go pro, you should understand the way you need to follow. In other crafts, there are practices recognized as the core of a profession. Programming is so vast, that you may get lost on the way, and certifications like SCP do not help much, as they are too technology oriented, looking more like a “technological masturbation” (technology for itself) rather than a way to really learn something useful. Software craftsmanship has a concept of mentoring, which is based on one of Agile  principles: “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.

How does it work in practice? To become a craftsman you start as an apprentice at some master of your choice. If you’re lucky, you’ll find someone to work for and learn from. If not (you have to work in a bad environment to get by, or everyone around doesn’t have more experience than you do), you can choose a well known writer, such as Martin Fowler or Robert C. Marting (Clean Code is a great start) and learn from him (all of them, even better). But that’s not enough. Next step would be to participate in the community (local language user groups, etc.) and finally, to get your ass to other places and learn from people out there. That means conferences, but also a week-out pair programming in another company, far, far away, an idea more and more popular in US, as you can see at software_craftsmanship google group. After all a journeyman has a “journey” part in it, doesn’t it?

So easy so far, right? Nothing new and mind-shaking?

The thing is to understand, that while official certifications are a great magnet for potential employers, skills of a good programmer don’t come from certification books. Skills come from work experience with other good programmers. That’s why Pair Programming is so important. That’s why you should start going for local language/craftsmanship group meetings even if you do not understand everything they are talking about. That’s why it’s more important to work WITH a great programmer than to work FOR a well known company.

I’ve seen so many people understating the technology to the ground, yet failing to create a good software solution,  because they’ve never ever seen, how a good solution is build. I’ve heard opinions that “no software is maintainable” from people with 10+ years of experience in Java.

All you really need is a mentor. A master, that can show you, what a great software is written like.

Sławomir Sobótka, answering the question “How to start with Java” on Jacek Laskowski’s blog, wrote lately: “I’d leave SCJP and similar sadomasochisms for later, maybe in a few years time, or even better, I’d boycott it all together”. He is damn right.

Robert C. Martin has a very interesting entry on his blog “Developer Certification WTF?”, where he is explaining why  official certification programs are so much bullshit these days. Beware of big companies as well, remember that “big and successful company” doesn’t mean “a good place to get better”. On the contrary, it sometimes means: “a place where an apprentice is treated like shit and a code monkey”. Check the company for people and methods that you’re going to be involved with on daily basis, before you send your CV. Ask a lot of questions, talk to the guys working there, if you can, ask to spend some time with the team, do some pair programming, and see what they are up to.

While chances are, in most companies your CV is going to be processed forward basing on buzzwords and certificates, the most important thing is to check whether the people you are going to work with can inspire you, bring you to the next level. And vice-versa. This is exactly what Thoughtworks is doing. Don’t be afraid to risk you stability and position to get more knowledge and experience. If you’ve been playing Heroes of Might and Magic, you probably know damn well, that to choose experience is better than to choose money in the long run. Always.

If you want more tips what to look for when searching for a good employer, have a look here.

Mentoring should not to be underestimated. When Piotr Jagielski began his speech about refactoring test code, at Agile Central Europe Conference, he started with saying that he was very lucky to get a great mentor at the very beginning of his work. I’m sharing similar experience: while I’ve started my carrier as an analyst in a long waterfallish kind of a project, when I’ve moved into programming I was extremely lucky to work with Piotr Szarwas, the guy who in one year taught me more than 5 years of university and two years of former software experience all together.

And if you already are a good programmer, remember that learning never stops. When you are a master, you are a student as well.

“Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I’m still learning, for learning is boundless.“ [Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do]

Solution Architect @ TouK

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DDevelopment & Design

How to automate tests with Groovy 2.0, Spock and Gradle

This is the launch of the 1st blog in my life, so cheers and have a nice reading!

y u no test?

Couple of years ago I wasn't a big fan of unit testing. It was obvious to me that well prepared unit tests are crucial though. I didn't known why exactly crucial yet then. I just felt they are important. My disliking to write automation tests was mostly related to the effort necessary to prepare them. Also a spaghetti code was easily spotted in test sources.

Some goodies at hand

Now I know! Test are crucial to get a better design and a confidence. Confidence to improve without a hesitation. Moreover, now I have the tool to make test automation easy as Sunday morning... I'm talking about the Spock Framework. If you got here probably already know what the Spock is, so I won't introduce it. Enough to say that Spock is an awesome unit testing tool which, thanks to Groovy AST Transformation, simplifies creation of tests greatly.

An obstacle

The point is, since a new major version of Groovy has been released (2.0), there is no matching version of Spock available yet.

What now?

Well, in a matter of fact there is such a version. It's still under development though. It can be obtained from this Maven repository. We can of course use the Maven to build a project and run tests. But why not to go even more "groovy" way? XML is not for humans, is it? Lets use Gradle.

The build file

Update: at the end of the post is updated version of the build file.
apply plugin: 'groovy'

apply plugin: 'idea'


def langLevel = 1.7


sourceCompatibility = langLevel

targetCompatibility = langLevel


group = 'com.tamashumi.example.testwithspock'

version = '0.1'


repositories {

    mavenLocal()

    mavenCentral()

    maven { url 'http://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/' }

}


dependencies {

    groovy 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.0.1'

    testCompile 'org.spockframework:spock-core:0.7-groovy-2.0-SNAPSHOT'

}


idea {

    project {

        jdkName = langLevel

        languageLevel = langLevel

    }

}
As you can see the build.gradle file is almost self-explanatory. Groovy plugin is applied to compile groovy code. It needs groovy-all.jar - declared in version 2.0 at dependencies block just next to Spock in version 0.7. What's most important, mentioned Maven repository URL is added at repositories block.

Project structure and execution

Gradle's default project directory structure is similar to Maven's one. Unfortunately there is no 'create project' task and you have to create it by hand. It's not a big obstacle though. The structure you will create will more or less look as follows: 
<project root>

│

├── build.gradle

└── src

    ├── main

    │   ├── groovy

    └── test

        └── groovy
To build a project now you can type command gradle build or gradle test to only run tests.

How about Java?

You can test native Java code with Spock. Just add src/main/java directory and a following line to the build.gradle: 
apply plugin: 'java'
This way if you don't want or just can't deploy Groovy compiled stuff into your production JVM for any reason, still whole goodness of testing with Spock and Groovy is at your hand.

A silly-simple example

Just to show that it works, here you go with a basic example.

Java simple example class:

public class SimpleJavaClass {


    public int sumAll(int... args) {


        int sum = 0;


        for (int arg : args){

            sum += arg;

        }


        return sum;

    }

}

Groovy simple example class:

class SimpleGroovyClass {


    String concatenateAll(char separator, String... args) {


        args.join(separator as String)

    }

}

The test, uhm... I mean the Specification:

class JustASpecification extends Specification {


    @Unroll('Sums integers #integers into: #expectedResult')

    def "Can sum different amount of integers"() {


        given:

            def instance = new SimpleJavaClass()


        when:

            def result = instance.sumAll(* integers)


        then:

            result == expectedResult


        where:

            expectedResult | integers

            11             | [3, 3, 5]

            8              | [3, 5]

            254            | [2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128]

            22             | [7, 5, 6, 2, 2]

    }


    @Unroll('Concatenates strings #strings with separator "#separator" into: #expectedResult')

    def "Can concatenate different amount of integers with a specified separator"() {


        given:

            def instance = new SimpleGroovyClass()


        when:

            def result = instance.concatenateAll(separator, * strings)


        then:

            result == expectedResult


        where:

            expectedResult     | separator   | strings

            'Whasup dude?'     | ' ' as char | ['Whasup', 'dude?']

            '2012/09/15'       | '/' as char | ['2012', '09', '15']

            'nice-to-meet-you' | '-' as char | ['nice', 'to', 'meet', 'you']

    }

}
To run tests with Gradle simply execute command gradle test. Test reports can be found at <project root>/build/reports/tests/index.html and look kind a like this.


Please note that, thanks to @Unroll annotation, test is executed once per each parameters row in the 'table' at specification's where: block. This isn't a Java label, but a AST transformation magic.

IDE integration

Gradle's plugin for Iintellij Idea

I've added also Intellij Idea plugin for IDE project generation and some configuration for it (IDE's JDK name). To generate Idea's project files just run command: gradle idea There are available Eclipse and Netbeans plugins too, however I haven't tested them. Idea's one works well.

Intellij Idea's plugins for Gradle

Idea itself has a light Gradle support built-in on its own. To not get confused: Gradle has plugin for Idea and Idea has plugin for Gradle. To get even more 'pluginated', there is also JetGradle plugin within Idea. However I haven't found good reason for it's existence - well, maybe excluding one. It shows dependency tree. There is a bug though - JetGradle work's fine only for lang level 1.6. Strangely all the plugins together do not conflict each other. They even give complementary, quite useful tool set.

Running tests under IDE

Jest to add something sweet this is how Specification looks when run with jUnit  runner under Intellij Idea (right mouse button on JustASpecification class or whole folder of specification extending classes and select "Run ...". You'll see a nice view like this.

Building web application

If you need to build Java web application and bundle it as war archive just add plugin by typing the line 
apply plugin: 'war'
in the build.gradle file and create a directory src/main/webapp.

Want to know more?

If you haven't heard about Spock or Gradle before or just curious, check the following links:

What next?

The last thing left is to write the real production code you are about to test. No matter will it be Groovy or Java, I leave this to your need and invention. Of course, you are welcome to post a comments here. I'll answer or even write some more posts about the subject.

Important update

Spock version 0.7 has been released, so the above build file doesn't work anymore. It's easy to fix it though. Just remove last dash and a word SNAPSHOT from Spock dependency declaration. Other important thing is that now spock-core depends on groovy-all-2.0.5, so to avoid dependency conflict groovy dependency should be changed from version 2.0.1 to 2.0.5.
Besides oss.sonata.org snapshots maven repository can be removed. No obstacles any more and the build file now looks as follows: 
apply plugin: 'groovy'

apply plugin: 'idea'


def langLevel = 1.7


sourceCompatibility = langLevel

targetCompatibility = langLevel


group = 'com.tamashumi.example.testwithspock'

version = '0.1'


repositories {

    mavenLocal()

    mavenCentral()

}


dependencies {

    groovy 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.0.5'

    testCompile 'org.spockframework:spock-core:0.7-groovy-2.0'

}


idea {

    project {

        jdkName = langLevel

        languageLevel = langLevel

    }

}
DDevelopment & Design

Journal.IO 1.3 released

AboutJust a moment ago (in February 17th) Journal.IO 1.3 has been released. Journal.IO (https://github.com/sbtourist/Journal.IO) is a lightweight, zero-dependency journal storage implementation written in Java. We use it in our project for storing appl...AboutJust a moment ago (in February 17th) Journal.IO 1.3 has been released. Journal.IO (https://github.com/sbtourist/Journal.IO) is a lightweight, zero-dependency journal storage implementation written in Java. We use it in our project for storing appl...