Adam Tornhill: Your Code as a Crime Scene - Episode 194

Adam Tornhill is a programmer who combines degrees in engineering and psychology. He's the founder of CodeScene where he designs tools for software analysis. He's also the author of Software Design X-Rays, the best-selling book Your Code as a Crime Scene, Lisp for the Web, and Patterns in C. Adam's other interests include modern history, music, and martial arts.

Topics of Discussion:

[2:10] Adam talks about how he got his start in code metrics 25 years ago and why he's discovered that it's so hard to write good code.

[3:48] What are the other book ideas Adam has to add to his existing four?

[4:53] What motivated Adam to write Your Code as a Crime Scene and what is the premise?

[9:02] When assembling the data, relevance, as well as quality, are both important.

[10:29] Cyclomatic complexity is an old metric, as are many others, that is not quite tangible or relevant.

[11:58] Why Adam prefers to look at code health vs. code quality.

[13:26] The process is slightly different when looking at code health for existing code vs. writing new code.

[15:23] How does CodeScene aid in the pull request process?

[18:31] CodeScene integrates with your version control repository and work tracking tools to find where bugs were introduced.

[22:22] Is CodeScene meant to be a standalone tool or can it work alongside many of the other tools on the market?

[24:57] Adam's rules of thumb for those getting started in software systems.

[28:12] Why Adam's preferred method of delivering software architecture has changed over the years.

[30:36] What are the steps for implementing CodeScene into a codebase?

Mentioned in this Episode:

Architect Tips — New video podcast!

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

Jeffrey Palermo's YouTube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

CodeScene — Free Community Edition

Adam Tornhill on Github

Software Design X-Rays

Your Code as a Crime Scene

Lisp for the Web

Patterns in C

"Code Red: The Business Impact of Code Quality"

Want to Learn More?

Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

Quotes:

• "Software development and software code, in particular, are very abstract. There's no way I can really take a software system and pull it out and turn it around and inspect it for flaws." — Adam [6:34]
• "What I'm most interested in is trends; so are we moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?" — Adam [15:14]
• "My experience, from working with all of these companies, is that pull requests and code reviews, in general, are extremely valuable… but they also tend to become a bottleneck in practice." — Adam [16:10]
• "A surprise is simply one of the most expensive things you can put into a software architecture." — Adam [30:15]
• "While these mechanics are simple, information is only good when acted upon." — Adam [31:20]

Adam: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn