October and the Technical Debt monster.

So October arrives, along with the Technical Debt Monster.

I was ready this week to finally get to jump into the audio system this week. Instead the Technical Debt Monster decided to turn up. Fortunately, it wasn’t as savage as I have seen on projects in the past. This one was ending up being an annoying little yapping dog, as opposed to a rampaging elephant. Specifically, it showed up as I was trying to transfer my work from the scanning system from the XCode playgrounds where I had been developing it into the actual project. In doing so I learned several things.

First, in terms of code executing speed XCode playgrounds and the Swift’s REPL is nowhere near as fast as running Swift code on the iPhone or even the iOS emulators. I was surprised by this after many years of writing Python code in Python’s REPL environments. I think the correct observation is that I took the speed of Python’s REPLs for granted and just assumed all REPLs were similar. This actually ended up being a good thing, because it helped be realized that some multi-threading I had added to my code to speed things along in the Playground was not needed. However, just because my code worked in the Playground, does not means it was perfect yet inside the project.

Second, I am seriously beginning to think the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to me in terms of coding. In all the software development I have done I have noticed I have a habit of over-designing code before I write anything. In general, this isn’t a bad thing. I like being organized and not wasting effort. However, my final code solutions always seem to be significantly simpler than what I expect them to be. Moving the scanning system over was no different. I realized I had too much redundant code and seeing the code run in the final implementation helped me notice bugs that were not apparent in the Playground. For example, I had not properly created a Model-View-Controller paradigm in the Playground, by not creating a proper controller class. I had just used the Main() loop as a controller. In doing so, my functions were referencing parts of the model and views that were valid in the Playground, but not in a true application.

In the end once I fixed all the bugs, I realized my code was much easier than what I envisioned. I know this because I wanted to properly document everything in the project, I decide to go back and update my original UML documentation for the designs. After making the changes I noticed that the UML designs were much clearer.

 

The third thing I noticed this week, was not so much a lesson as a realization. First, my idea to use a Priority Queue to keep track of the scanning points worked. Actually, I ended up creating a Priority Queue of Priority Queues. Seems a little weird and it was a little confusing to design but it does seem to be doing the job well. The second thing was in order to debug the scanning points, I had to write a simple scaling linear transformation to covert from the model data to the view. I know neither of these two thing seem particularly unique, but what got me is seeing something that we have learned as theory in school become relevant and practical. I don’t know why, but particularly seeing the linear transformation work just seemed like magic. I think it is because along with over-designing my code I have an annoying need to test every line of code I write with something small and work bigger [a good habit, but tedious at times]. With the set of points, I didn’t do that, I just ran it and it worked. If there is a lesson, I think it is just the universe trying to tell me to have a little more faith in my code and all the theory I have learned for computer science.

 

Finally, I think I am a little behind in terms of where I was hoping to be in the project. Looking back, I have to admit my scheduling was a little too ambitious. I think part of the reason is when I was thinking through the scheduling I broke one of my own rules. Years ago I did an internship at KET and my manager there taught me a really elegant rule to planning and scheduling that I notice really does seem to work out more times than not. His rule was, when trying to calculate scheduling and supplies out for a project, take whatever you calculate as fairly optimal and add a third of everything to that: time, resources, whatever. About 95% of the time, your totals will work out to exactly what is needed. In my anecdotal observations of projects his idea seems to be right on the money. With this semester, I forgot to do that for a variety of reasons most of them just based in ambition. However, when I think of everything taking the 1/3 rule into account my scheduling does seem about right. That makes me think that a friend’s observation I might be putting too much pressure on myself to get through it is correct. Fortunately, with October and Autumn [my favorite month and season] arriving I feel like I will probably makeup any time I have lost. I always seem to work a lot better when the oppressive summer has finally broken.

About ForeverTangent
Was a Masters of Computer Science Student at the University of Kentucky. Previous Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon. Before that Graduated from Berklee College of Music. I have worked for Public Radio and the Video Games industry. Most of my interests now are UI and Accessibility Issues for Technology.

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