Yak shaving

Yak shaving

There are some words and phrases whose precise meanings just won’t stick in my head. “Yak shaving” is one of them.

So I want to thank the author of this blog post, Yevgeniy Brikman, first of all for writing a great post about infrastructure, but also for providing a great visual aid to remind me what yak shaving is.

And I’m putting it here so that I can look it up, the next time I forget.

Here is a great visual example of yak shaving.

(Apologies, I would have embedded the giphy but I’m still using the web version of WordPress, which doesn’t seem to allow it. I will hopefully sort this out soonish).

Simultaneous equations and algorithms: Finding the “best fit” of cells in a grid

Simultaneous equations and algorithms: Finding the “best fit” of cells in a grid

I got pinged by my colleague @j_f_green this morning with the following message: “Hey Clare. Hope all is well. Was wondering if I could be cheeky and get your input on a (small) thing I’m trying to solve? I am searching for an elegant solution and I’m starting to suspect the answer may involve maths.”

…and of course I was instantly interested.

The problem

It turned out to be a relatively simple problem, depending on your point of view. If I say “GCSE-level simultaneous equations” your reaction will tell you whether that’s simple for you or not (for people not in theUK, GCSEs are the exams our pupils take when they are 16 years old).

Here is the problem: We want to discover two whole numbers (aka positive integers) that will give us the height and width of a grid in cells, given the following constraints:

  1. We have a number, let’s call it capacity, which represents the minimum number of cells to fill the grid. We want at least that many cells. We’re happy if we have more, but not if we have fewer.
  2. We also have another number, we’ll call it aspectRatio, which is the aspect ratio of the grid. This is the relationship between height and width. So for instance, if the aspect ratio is 2:1, that means the width is twice the height (it’s twice as wide as it is high). To reduce that to a single number,  aspectRatio is 2.

width = 2 * height = aspectRatio * height

(aspectRatio will often be a decimal or a fraction, so for instance if width is half height, aspectRatio is 0.5, or if the ratio is 2:3 then aspectRatio = 2/3 = 0.66, and width = 0.66 * height)

A concrete example

Here is a concrete example: Let’s say we have a grid that is twice as wide as it is high, so aspectRatio = 2. Let’s also say that our capacity is 200: We want to fit at least 200 cells into this space. I’ve deliberately chosen an easy example, and the answer in this case would be a width of 20 and a height of 10:

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Apologies if that’s making your eyes hurt. Is it making your eyes hurt? It’s making my eyes hurt. I’ll try and make a better diagram later. It’s not even got the correct aspect ratio on the page…

If you enjoy attacking maths problems, look away now. Have a go at solving it before you read on. You may come up with a better solution anyway.

So how do we compute the answer?

One way would be a loop. Here is some code that would do the job:

var capacity = 1000;
var aspectRatio = 1000 / 800 = 1.25;

int width = 0;
int height = 0;

while (width * height < capacity)
{
height += 1;
width = RoundToNearestInteger(height * aspectRatio);
}

Assert.AreEqual(height, 29);
Assert.AreEqual(width, 36);

Here we have a grid that has at least 1000 cells:
36 * 29 = 1044

It has roughly the correct aspect ratio:
36 / 29 = 1.24
1000 / 800 = 1.25

The problem with this is that it does not scale well. The higher the numbers, the longer the loop. But fear not – maths to the rescue.

A simple use case

Let’s start with a simple use case: imagine the aspect ratio is 2:1, and the width is twice the height. Also let’s say we’re trying to fit 200 pixels into the space.
Let’s call width and height x and y. So:
x * y = 200
and
x = 2 * y = 2y
If x = 2y then x * y is the same as 2y * y, which is 2y²:
2y² = 200
y² = 100
y = 10
x = 20 (because it’s 2y)

A generalised solution

The first block above gives us our two simultaneous equations.

We can generalise the same approach for all numbers. Let’s call the capacity a, and the ratio b. Using our equations from above :
x * y = a
and
x = b * y
These are our simultaneous equations. Using the same logic as above, we substitute y for x and end up with:
by² = a
Which means that
y² = a/b
and
y = sqrt(a/b)
(where “sqrt” is square root).
Then once you’ve calculated y, you can calculate x:
x = b * y
The only missing piece of the puzzle is that we are dealing with inequality, not equality. So really it’s this:
y >= sqrt(a/b)
This just means that once you get a result, you round it up to the nearest integer. Same applies to the final substitution : if b * y is not a whole number, then round it up.
When you calculate b * y, you should use y BEFORE rounding.
So to finish, let’s stop being mathsy and start being softwarey. Let’s give our variables some meaningful names:
height >= sqrt(capacity / aspectRatio)
width = aspectRatio * height
If we test it with the example we used in the loop above, where aspectRatio = 1.25 and capacity = 1000, we get the same results:
height >= 28.28 [= sqrt(1000 / 1.25)]
width = 36 [= RoundUp(1.25 * height)]
So height = 29, width = 36, aspectRatio = 36 / 29 = 1.24, num cells = 29 * 36 = 1044
Now we can finish with some code:
var heightUnrounded = SquareRoot(capacity / aspectRatio);
var height = RoundUp(heightUnrounded);
var width = RoundUp(heightUnrounded * aspectRatio);
Compared to the loop we started with, this scales brilliantly. It doesn’t matter how big the numbers are, the compute time is basically the same. It has a constant computational complexity, otherwise known as O(1)*. The solution above using a loop gets slower and slower depending on how big the numbers are. It has a computational complexity of O(n), so it’s not as good.
Hopefully that makes sense and I didn’t over-simplify. All feedback welcome.
* I couldn’t remember how to express O(1) so I initially guessed at O(k), because I was thinking of k as a constant. Sadly I was wrong, because I rather like the thumbs-up “Ok” concept.
Martin Fowler webinar, new Refactoring book

Martin Fowler webinar, new Refactoring book

These may well be the notiest notes I’ve ever published, but just in case they’re of any use to anyone… if nothing else they may whet your appetite for the new edition of Martin Fowler’s Refactoring book.

I confess I never read it first time round (not on purpose, just there are so many books in the world and so little time…), so I’m looking forward to reading it this time. It hasn’t come out yet in the UK but should be some time in the next few weeks. Mine is already on order [drums fingers impatiently].

So anyway, Martin did a webinar today on the topic of his new book, and here are my notes:

Refactoring should be done via small changes

  • v small semantics-preserving changes
  • So small they’re not worth doing on their own
  • String together small changes to make a big change

When adding new functionality:

  • Alternate between refactoring and adding functionality
  • Often it’s easier to add new functionality if you refactor first
  • Balance between adding new functionality and refactoring – it’s a matter of judgement

V1 of Martin’s Refactoring book vs v2

  • Some things that were included in the first book he decided not to include I the second
    • Eg Unidirectional vs bidirectional – not important
  • Some things he thought were too trivial for the first book, he has now changed his mind about and included
    • Eg moving statements within a function
  • Most notable changes = no longer centrally object-oriented
    • “Extract function” used throughout instead of extract method
    • One of the refactorings is around the choice between OO and non-OO
    • The most visible thing here is the choice of language (javascript)
    • But language is not necessarily relevant anyway
  • OO vs functional
    • He doesn’t see that as a huge shift
    • OO should still have functional elements – referentially transparent
    • They are overlapping paradigms, not distinct

Favourite refactorings?

  • “Split phase”
    • Hunk of computation which can sensibly be divided into two phases with a data structure communicating between them
    • Eg parsing – separate the tokenising out – deal with a series of tokens instead of a stream of text
    • But if you split a loop, what if you are introducing performance problems? See below…

Performance and refactoring

  • Split loop is something people often worry about because it will run the loop through twice
  • Most of the time it doesn’t matter – a push for clarity will not change the performance of the code
  • Most of the time by refactoring you open up an opportunity for performance improvements you would never have noticed otherwise
  • Then again you should run performance tests frequently
  • Not necessarily with every build, but every day or two
  • But most micro-changes have no impact on performance
  • You will only find real performance impact by performance testing

Recommendations for other books?

Refactoring architecture:

  • Always have to ask, how do you make the smallest possible change?
  • Eg extracting a data-intensive microservice from a larger system
  • Most of the moves are happening within the monolith BEFORE you start firing up the external system
  • Then you move stuff in really small pieces
  • Things that change for similar reasons should be together – you need to see the relationship between them

Branching / trunk-based development

  • Develop on a branch and merge at the end, with branch being long-lived – days, weeks or months
    • Still a really common pattern
  • But if something has been refactored, you don’t find out until you merge – this can blow up on you
    • It means you become scared to refactor! There’s a disincentive.
  • Continuous integration: Integrate with each other fully at regular intervals – at least once a day
  • Every day you receive everyone else’s code changes and push your own changes back
  • Removes the big painful merge problem – not saving up for a big horrible crunch
  • Adage of Apollo – it hurts if you do it more often (?)
    • Sorry, I wrote this down but I’ve since Googled it and I don’t really know what it’s about – I may have misheard!
  • Open source development:
    • Actually this CAN be a good place to use branches, because everyone working separately and you can’t guarantee all changes should be merged
  • People call it trunk-based development but “continuous integration” is a better name because that’s what it’s really about
  • People worry about continuous integration but it’s less painful than they think
    • If you do integration every day it becomes easier and less painful until you stop even noticing

Responsibility

  • Keep code base in healthy state
  • If not you are stealing from colleagues, clients and employers!
  • But no point saying you should do it for moral reasons, that won’t motivate people to do it
  • It’s economic: Want to get more changes out more quickly
  • It’s professional: We’re being paid to produce features rapidly
  • It’s not up to managers or business: They don’t know how to keep code healthy – that’s what they pay us to do

Refactoring and design patterns – are they incompatible?

  • With a lot of patterns, you shouldn’t introduce them right away cos they’re not appropriate and you don’t require the full strength of them yet, particularly the more complicated ones
  • Introduce patterns as a result of refactoring: Refactor towards them
  • This was recognised by the original Design Patterns authors (Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides)
  • Also Josh Kerievsky: Refactoring to Patterns

Code smells

  • Code smell of the week!
    • “This week we will look at long methods” – whenever we find them we try to refactor them

When not to refactor!

  • Code that is never touched
    • Sitting behind an API, working quite happily, doesn’t need to change – doesn’t matter if it’s a mess!
  • Don’t clean code all in one go – just a little bit more every time you go in
    • Over time that will concentrate your efforts where they are most needed – ie areas modified most frequently

Refactor as a step in the red-green-refactor cycle

  • You should only refactor when tests are green
  • Sometimes that means you have to remove a failing test, refactor, then put the failing test back in again
  • Ralph Johnson, John Brant, Don Roberts wrote the first Smalltalk refactoring book (A refactoring tool for smalltalk?)

If you don’t have tests you can’t refactor?

  • “Probably safe” refactorings? Interesting route to go? Not a great thing for most people to focus on, requires a lot of expertise
  • For most people you should have tests as well – after all, how do you know whether you’re breaking what’s currently there?

Final takeaway:

  • Small steps, commit frequently.
  • Then you can always roll back.
Getting Started with .Net Core, ASP and WebAPI

Getting Started with .Net Core, ASP and WebAPI

I followed this tutorial, which is very good: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/tutorials/web-api-vsc?view=aspnetcore-2.1

There were some gotchas though, so (as always) I made notes:

  • Whenever you add new code you have to stop running and rebuild before you can send successful requests.
  • When you do a POST, the port number is 5001 or 5000: It’s whatever you’re using in the browser for GET requests
  • When you add the Update method, you have to send another POST to create a new Todo item before you can update it. The url is the location field from the response of the POST.
  • When you add the Delete method, use the GET request in the browser to find the Ids of existing items so you know what you can delete. The url is the same as the Update url, with appropriate Id added on. Use the GET request to check whether deletes have worked. Use the POST to add elements you can then delete.
  • When you add a new database context you need to update the dependency injection stuff in Startup.cs and you need to make sure your POCO class has an Id property.

See also the following two posts:

Converting a .Net Standard console app into a .Net Core console app

Converting a .Net Standard console app into a .Net Core console app

If you have a simple .Net console app and you’d like to convert it into a .Net Core app so that you can run it from the command line on any platform (as long as you install .Net Core), here’s what to do:

  • Remove the following files and folders from your project:
    • Bin folder
    • Obj folder
    • Packages folder
    • Properties / Assemblyinfo.cs
    • config
  • Create a new temp folder and run this command in that folder: dotnet new console
    • Take the csproj file created by that command and use it to replace the csproj file in your original project (using the name of the original csproj file).
    • !! If your original csproj file was in a nested folder, the new csproj file will have to be in the root.
      • But your program.cs file can stay where it was.
      • Or you can create a *.sln folder at the root level and add references to any nested csproj files.
        • To create a sln file: dotnet new sln
        • To add a csproj file (in a nested tests folder) to your sln file: dotnet sln add .\tests\tests.csproj
    • Command line: dotnet restore
    • Now you can build and run the new project from the command line: dotnet run
  • Check the old project for packages to include:
    • Look in packages.config
    • For instance, if you see a line that looks like this:
      • <package id=”NUnit” version=”3.11.0″ targetFramework=”net452″ />
    • …you need to run this on the command line: dotnet add package nunit -v 3.11.0
    • !!! If NUnit is one of the packages, you need to do some extra actions – see Adding NUnit tests to a .Net Core console app.
  • Gotchas:
    • You can’t build and run a console app in Visual Studio if the code is in Google Drive. You’ll get a very generic uninformative error – “Unable to start program … refresh the process list”.
    • If you try to add the NUnit package manually, you may get errors. Follow the actions in Adding NUnit tests to a .Net Core console app to fix.
      • Otherwise you may get the following errors:
      • 1) “Unable to find tests” Fix this with the following command (check version – this was Oct 2018): dotnet add package Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk -v 15.7.2
      • 2) “Program has more than one entry point defined”. This is fixed by adding the following sub-element to a <PropertyGroup> element in your csproj file:
      • 3) “No test is available”. Fix this by adding the NUnit3TestAdapter package (at time of writing – Oct 2018 – this was version 3.10.0).

See also the following post:

Adding NUnit tests to a .Net Core console app

Adding NUnit tests to a .Net Core console app

(I’ve learnt a lot more since I originally wrote this (for instance, how to debug your tests), so this is an updated version).

This weekend I was part of a team that took part in the annual Hack Manchester hackathon (and we won Best in Show! Yay!). We used .Net Core for our back end code, and we got stuck in the middle of the night trying to add tests to our solution. It turned out the solution was pretty simple, so I’m documenting it here.

Intro

  • To get started with a vanilla ASP.Net Core app + WebAPI: Getting Started with .Net Core, ASP and WebAPI
  • There are two versions below. The one you choose will probably depend on things like deployment pipelines. If you are doing anything other than a quick hack, Version 1 is probably better.
  • To be perfectly honest, the only reason I moved from one to another was because I (mistakenly) thought I couldn’t debug the tests or run them in an IDE unless they were in a separate project. It turned out that the only thing preventing me was that I hadn’t installed the relevant extension (see “Debug the tests / run the tests from an IDE” below).
  • Version 1:
    • Place tests in a separate project/folder
  • Version 2:
    • Keep all the tests in same folder/project as the source. This is quicker / simpler.

Version 1 – keep tests in separate folder/project

  • This version places tests in a separate project / folder. This is probably better if you want a deployment pipeline.
  • NB If your source is currently in your root folder, then you’ll need to move it into a separate folder (eg a src folder). This is easy:
    • Close down any IDEs you have running
    • Create a new src folder
    • If you don’t have a *.sln file, create one by opening the project in Visual Studio or running the command: dotnet new sln
    • Edit your solution file so that your csproj is prefixed by its new folder name
      • For me that meant changing ” TimeTravelApi.csproj” to “src/TimeTravelApi.csproj”
    • Move everything except *.sln into your new src folder
  • Create a separate tests folder in your root folder
  • Navigate to your new tests folder
  • Create the nunit project:
    • There are two ways of doing this.
      • The first way is to run this command: dotnet new “NUnit 3 Test Project”
      • The second way is to manually add three new packages: NUnit, Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk and NUnit3TestAdapter – see below for how to do this manually.
  • Add a reference to your source project:
    • Run this command (replace “YourProject” with your project name): dotnet add reference ../src/YourProject.csproj
    • If you get an error about “incompatible targeted frameworks” then:
      • Go into your tests.csproj and change the .Net version from 2.0 to 2.1 like this: <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.1</TargetFramework>
      • Run this command to upgrade the nunit version: dotnet add package nunit -v 3.11.0
      • ! This works in Oct 2018, but it might be different in the future!
    • Add your new tests project to the solution:
      • Navigate back up to your root folder
      • Command: dotnet sln add ./tests/tests.csproj
    • Write and run some tests (see “Write and run some tests” below)

Version 2 – keep tests in same folder/project as source

  • This version keeps all the tests in same folder/project as the source. This is quicker / simpler if you are trying to keep things small and simple.
  • Add the necessary packages:
    • You can run the separate package commands on the command line (see below), but you’re probably better off using the dedicated nunit command.
    • Dedicated nunit command:
      • Command line: dotnet new “NUnit 3 Test Project”
    • Separate commands for each package (check versions – this was written Oct 2018):
      • Command line: dotnet add package nunit -v 3.11.0
      • Command line: dotnet add package Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk -v 15.7.2
      • Command line: dotnet add package NUnit3TestAdapter -v 3.10.0
    • Add the following sub-element to a <PropertyGroup> element in your csproj file:
      • This: <GenerateProgramFile>false</GenerateProgramFile>
    • Write and run some tests (see “Write and run some tests” below)

Write and run some tests

  • Write some tests
    • At the bottom of this post is a skeleton you can use – it’s all you need for a functioning test
    • Run the tests from the command line: dotnet test -v normal
    • Debug the tests / run the tests from an IDE:
      • In Visual Studio Code:
        • Install the .Net Core Test Explorer extension (from Preferences | Extensions)
          • Mac: in the Code menu
          • Windows: in the File menu
        • Now you will see “Run test” and “Debug test” options above every test.
      • In Visual Studio (Windows):
        • Install the NUnit test adaptor:
          • Tools | Extensions and Updates
          • Select online on the left
          • Search for NUnit
          • Find NUnit 3 Test Adaptor
          • Click Download
          • Close down Visual Studio AND Visual Studio Code
          • You will get a VSIX installer dialog
        • Run the tests:
          • The Test menu gives you options for running tests
          • Then Test | Windows | Test explorer will show you the results
        • Debug tests:
          • Test | Windows | Test explorer: right-click on a test and choose Debug selected tests

A skeleton NUnit test:

using NUnit.Framework;
namespace KiwilandRouteApplication.Tests
{
  [TestFixture]
  public class DummyTests
  {
    [Test]
    public void DemoTest()
    {
      Assert.True(true);
    }
  }
}
Hack Manchester 2018 – The Challenges

Hack Manchester 2018 – The Challenges

I couldn’t find anywhere all the Hack Manchester 2018 challenges / prizes were listed together, so I’m putting them all on one page for easy comparison.

! I’m not sure if they’re all there yet – there might be more to come, so keep an eye on the Hack Manchester site (scroll down to the “THE CHALLENGES” – yellow section just before the schedule).

Follow the links below to find out about the sponsors and see more detail / explanation about the challenges:

WebApp UK: Best in Show. (Our team came second for Best in Show last year. Just sayin’.)

MediaBurst: “The most bizarre use of ClockworkSMS!.”

Dunnhumby: “use data to make the consumer experience… less than optimal.”

Centre For Biological Timing: “make technology work for our body clocks rather than against them … hack your body clock!”

Avecto: “create a digital solution to help protect or inform friends and family of the issues around Cyber Security.”

AND Digital: “Can clever tech help turn passenger misery into passenger delight?”

GCHQ: “think locally: utilise the fantastic open data sources available about Greater Manchester to improve the safety of the general public.”

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