Functional Programming In Python 2

I gave a talk this month to the Tampa Bay Python User Group on functional programming in Python. It's actually the second part of the talk. I've put the slides up for all to enjoy here. If you have any questions or complaints, feel free to contact me. I welcome all comments.

Collaboration Not Pairing

One of the tenants of Extreme Programming is pairing on all production code. At first, it seems to make perfect sense. Four eyes on all code is better than two, right? There is another partner to help solve issues, take over when one is tired, and to keep each other honest. What could be wrong with that? Plenty. I feel that pairing is good in spurts of time or as I like to say, "Collaborate not pair".

I want someone to help me on the hard problems. I don't need someone peering over my shoulder to make sure I'm coding a for loop correctly. I think big picture. I want a pair to help with the design and make sure it is sound. The physical act of coding might have some hard problems too and I would like a pair for that as well. But, for the mundane boilerplate code, I don't need to watch someone type that.

I believe you need a mix of alone time on a problem and together time to exchange ideas. Pairing constantly stops that and it's easy to fall prey to a stronger partner's ideas even if those ideas are bad. The stronger personality wins. This should not be the case. But, I've seen it many times on XP projects. A pair put into production code that was clearly not good and hard to maintain. The very thing pairing is supposed to prevent.

This doesn't mean I don't want four eyes on all code either. I think a collaborator should read over every line of code that is written in isolation and ask questions. This is where time away is helpful. The partner brings an outside perspective than if the pair was sitting side by side. This prevents group think or one partner overbearing another. There's also the case where some developers are intimidated working with someone all of the time. They need to have space to properly think. These developers can be prone to letting a stronger partner always have their way. Again, not what we want.

As you can see, I'm not against pairing, but against constant pairing. Collaborate when necessary and make sure to leave time to think in isolation. You need both. You can't be all one side or the other. Either one all of the time is not healthy. But, how much collaboration versus alone time is needed? This is where you have to use your best judgement. Agility is about thinking and finding the right solution for the right situation. It's not a one size fits all world.

Domain Driven Design Immersion

I've been meaning to write about my experience at the Domain Driven Design Immersion training that I took back in November. But, I've been so busy that I haven't had the time to put down my thoughts on it properly until today. First off, I had a great time; met many wonderful and intelligent people; and learned quite a few new techniques. Just given that, it was well worth the time. The course was simply fantastic.

I read Domain-Driven Design when it first came and fell in love with it. I've read it several times and consider it one of the greatest books on design. It's a tome of knowledge on being practical in design and getting closer to mapping user language to code. There are no silver bullets, just great advice and a road map of thought to get there. Despite the book being well-written, there were questions I've had when applying DDD throughout the years. I jumped at the chance to spend a week immersed in DDD and learn a few more tricks.

The training was excellent: well-paced, interactive, and loads of discussion. DDD is something that you must practice and the training provides a lot of it. From hands on coding to white board design sessions, you get your mind in the middle of the whole process. The trainers guided discussion and encouraged us to be creative in our solutions: messy whiteboards are good! I've been to a lot of training and seminars. Normally, little thought was given to pacing of the material. This was not the case with DDD Immersion. I felt there was an excellent mix of lecture, hands-on, and discussions. Each day felt like it went by too fast. Four days is not a lot of time to cram the amount of material that the DDD book covers, but the course materials provided abbreviated documents to bullet point the important ideas. I personally thought the materials made the course all worth it.

Even if you have read the DDD book, I still think the training is worth it's weight in gold. I work with Eric on his Time and Money library and I still got new ideas out of it. The training does add new material to the book and expands on Eric's new ideas concerning DDD.

The one thing that I took from the training is it's all about practicing to get better at design. Eric has laid out a path of thought on design. It still takes ingenuity and playing around with ideas to be successful. Design is a creative process and it takes hard thinking to match the language of users into code. The training brings that home. I whole heartily recommend the training and would go again given the chance. The real world keep giving me problems where questions arise to the best way to tackle them. You can never stop learning.