Don't bother porting dead code

I have a task on me to move (we call it "port") some test code from one location to another.  The details are not interesting, but it did involve moving a test "Shape" object and a "Text" object.

The text object and the shape object both inherited from the same parent class, included the same set of header files, were co-located in the same directory within the project I wanted to modify and were otherwise similar in structure.  For a variety of reasons, though, the text object could be moved without much effort at all.  The shape object proved far more difficult.

At first, the compiler complained it could not find the header file for shape.h.  That was a little tricky, but it boiled down to having 2 files named shape.h in the project, and the path to the file I wanted was not specified correctly.  Fixing that caused the shape object not to be able to inherit from its parent class.

And thus began about 2 weeks of trying to get the darn code to build.  I would find and fix one problem only to get to the next error.  This is not unusual - we call it peeling the onion - but it is time consuming. 

For my needs, this is a medium priority task at best, so I wasn't working on it full time.  Just when I could fit it into my schedule for an hour or so.  I started with 27 build errors, built that up to about 100, then whittled it all down to 2.

But at this point I was 2 weeks into build files, linking errors, etc… and decided to try a new approach since I felt I was treating symptoms and not the underlying problem.

I put everything back where it was (reverted my changes, so to speak) and rebuilt.  I then stepped through the code to see how the Shape object was being allocated and used.

It wasn't.

Although it is referenced in the tests, it was never used.  It was dead code.

Sigh.

I was able to delete the dead code, move everything else I needed and got unblocked.

Lesson learned - do your investigation early in the process to determine what actually needs to be ported!

Now, off to a 2 week hiatus.  See you when I am back!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

Back from Tableau Conference 2017

What a whirlwind that was.  I started the week help with folks getting their schedules straight, then did a little docent work with helping people find rooms.  I also was crowd control for seating during the keynotes (which were a blast! Adam Savage was pretty terrific) and even got to do a little security work in there.

Overall, this was a fantastic conference.  I got to meet several of our customers 1 on 1 and gained some tremendous insights into what everyone wants from us.  That alone made the conference worthwhile for me - now I have a much better idea where I need to focus my time and test efforts moving forward.

If you come next year in New Orleans, be sure to let me know!  I'd love to spend some time chatting with any Tableau users that happen to be reading this blog!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

PS: Yes, someone mentioned that it seemed like everywhere we walked we always walked through the casino.  I just chuckled and mentioned that means that whoever designed the walkways did the job right...

I so badly want to rewrite this little bit of test code, but won't

I saw something similar to this in a test script:

#fdef Capybara:

#include "A.h"
#include "B.h"

#else

#include "B.h"

#endif

Fair enough.  I can imagine that this was NOT the way this conde snippet was checked in - it probably changed over time to what it is now.  I haven't yet dug into the history of it.

That seems a bit inefficient to me and I would prefer to change it to:

#fdef Capybara:

#include "A.h"

#endif
#include "B.h"

Fewer lines and should perform the exact same includes. 

But I won't make this change and here is why:

1. It may break.  The odds are small, but why add risk where the system is currently working?
2. It's a small benefit overall.  Maybe 1/1000 of a second faster build times.
3. It takes some amount of time to make the change, build, test it, get a code review, check it in, etc…  I can't see any time savings for this change in the long run.
4. A better fix than this one change would be a tool looking for this pattern in ALL our files.  Then use the tool to make the change everywhere, and make the tool part of the regular code checks we perform constantly.

But considering #2 overall, even a tool would not pay for itself.  So I am leaving this as is for now and moving on to my next task.

(But if I have the fortune of needing to edit that file, I will be sorely tempted to make this fix at the same time :) )

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John