Category Archives: Technology

Taking a peek at Jason Cohen, Smart Bear, and Code Collaborator

Check this out.

Hang on, hang on, let me back up.

Jason Cohen.  Is that name familiar?  If it isn’t, this is the guy who founded Smart Bear Software.  Smart Bear Software has a piece of software called Code Collaborator, which is a “web-based tool that simplifies and expedites peer code reviews.”  Here’s the sales pitch.

The reason I’m posting all of this is because of what I’m looking for – papers concerning code review, and the relationship (or lack thereof) between code review techniques and computer science education.

Which all traces back to that first link I posted – a series of whitepapers and articles on Code Collaborator, and code reviews in general.  This is good stuff.  Sure, it’s not really oriented around computer science education, but these people seem to know what they’re talking about.

There’s even a free book, which details their massive code review study, which is, apparently, the largest-ever case study of its kind.

I’ve ordered the free book, just for kicks.  In the mean time, I’m going to glance over their Cisco study.

“Code reviews” by Arjen Markus (2009)

Code Reviews

by Arjen Markus
Deltares, The Netherlands
ACM Fortran Forum, August 2009, 28, 2

This is one of the first papers I found.  Consider it my “warm up” paper.

According to the header, Arjen Markus works for “Deltares”, and after a quick Google-hunt, I found out that Deltares is a “new independent Dutch institute for national and international delta issues”.

Upon closer inspection, it seems that Markus’ paper is concerned with what reviewers should be looking for during code reviews:

“What should you be looking for in the code?  It is not enough to check that the code adheres to the programming standard of the project it belongs to.  Such a standard may not exist, be incomplete or be focussed on layout, not on questionable constructs that are a liability.  With this article I would like to fill in this practical gap, at least partly.” (Page 4)

This isn’t exactly what I set out to look for, but I thought I’d give it a once-over anyways.

Markus’ paper is not what I would call a rigorous scientific publication.  There is no empirical data, no hypothesis, none of that good ol’ scientific method stuff.  Instead, it’s more akin to a “do” and “do not” set of advice and examples that one would find in a software engineering textbook.

A FORTRAN software engineering textbook, to be more precise.  Markus’ examples are all in FORTRAN.

Broken down simply, Markus has four principles, or bits of advice:

“The importance of being explicit”

Essentially, this means to be clear with what you’re doing in the code.  It’s common sense stuff:  don’t be overly clever, be readable, don’t use magic numbers or strings, document your code, group related routines into the same modules, use information hiding in your modules when appropriate, clear and precise error messages, etc.

“Don’t go your own way”

Markus advises developers to stick to an agreed coding standard / style guide.  Don’t reinvent the wheel – instead, use typical solutions to problems that arise.  “Don’t go against the grain” (Page 7).

“Be careful out there”

Markus advises developers to watch out for documented language quirks, common language pitfalls, etc.  This is followed by numerous examples in FORTRAN.

“Curiouser and curiouser”

Markus asks to keep an eye out for “a lack of attention to design, to readability and other aspects that are important for the program in the long run” (Page 11).    He also repeats a few things from “the importance of being explicit” – mainly, to make sure that the code is organized in a way that makes sense to the developers.

I don’t know.  I don’t think I’m the target audience here.  In hindsight, I found the information in this paper to be very general, and rather self-evident.  The only thing I seemed to learn was a bit about FORTRAN quirks.

I think I need to be less laissez faire in my paper selections.  This one didn’t help me find what I was looking for, and I should have seen that from the abstract.  Bah.

EDIT:  Why did I waste my time searching ACM when more interesting information was waiting right under my nose?  I think I have an idea what to review next.

Code Reviews

My graduate supervisor has asked me to look into the following problem:

Code reviews. They can help make our software better. But how come I didn’t learn about them, or perform them in my undergrad courses?  Why aren’t they taught as part of the software engineering lifecycle right from the get-go?  I learn about version control, but why not peer code review?  Has it been tried in the academic setting?  If so, why hasn’t it succeeded and become part of the general CS curriculum?  If it hasn’t been tried, why not?  What’s the hold up?  What’s the problem?

I’m to dive into academic papers regarding the above, and blog about what I find out.

Stay tuned.

Adventure Games

I wouldn’t consider myself a “gamer” by any stretch of the imagination.

Just watch me try to play Halo – I’ll run around in circles, button-jamming before somebody mercifully puts me out of my misery.

And that’s common across games that involve me running around with a gun.  With the exception of Portal (which was incredible), the whole first person shooter genre kind of bores me.  I’m not really impressed by amazing 3d graphics, or physics/particle engines.  I just…don’t care.  I just don’t get the same pleasure out of blowing up and shooting enemies that other people seem to.

I like something a bit more cerebral.  I like story (which is why Portal is an exception).  I like puzzle solving.  I like thinking for a character, not just running around, pulling the trigger for a character.

And this is the way it’s always been for me.

But ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a real passion for adventure games. I used to play all of the old Sierra stuff…Kings Quest I-VI (before it turned lame – VII onward), the Space Quest series (5 being my favourite, but I have a soft spot for the original), the Gabriel Knight series…

And that’s just Sierra.  LucasArts brought about Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle (a masterpiece), The Monkey Island Series (also brilliant), The Dig (my personal favourite), Full Throttle, Grim Fandango…

There was Myst, and Riven. So good.  And can’t forget Zork.

Simon The Sorcerer 1, 2, and 3…

I loved these games.  I still love these games.  I love being integrated so deeply into an interesting story, and having to rely on my wits and intelligence to solve problems.  I get a cerebral kick out of solving the various puzzles that the game designers throw at me.

And what these games all compel me to do, without fail….is:  to make one.  Make an adventure game.  Tell a good story.  Suck the player in, and throw puzzles, deep character, and thick story/plot at them.  After I finish one of these games, I usually end up Googling “how to make an adventure game”, and spending the rest of my night reading up on it.  And anytime I’m on a holiday break, and have nothing to do…I always gravitate to the subject.

I’ve read all about LucasArts SCUMM and GrimE engines…Sierra’s AGI and SCI engines… Adventure Soft’s AGOS engine…  and I’m grateful for the ScummVM and FreeSCI folk who share my passion, and have allowed me to play all of these old games on my Linux box.  Reading about these engines just makes me want to use them to build my own game.

I could try to use a number of closed-source adventure game engines out there – I hear the Wintermute engine is pretty good.  So is Adventure Game Studio.

But somehow…they never satisfy me.

The MAD adventure game engine is open source, and has some good ideas…but the code is also a bit of a mess, and hasn’t been maintained since 2003.

So I’ve always wanted to build my own adventure game engine, and solve all of the problems that one would have to in order to make it work:  path finding, graphics, animation, scripting, layering/masking, fonts…  Lots of neat sub-problems.   It’d be hard, but I also think it’d be a lot of fun.

So just watch me…it’ll happen someday.

The Shoulders of Tall, Smart People

Recently, I came to the realization that I’ve been writing computer programs in one form or another since I was about 6 or 7 years old.

Along the way, I’ve had plenty of people to influence the way I think about code, and how I write it.  Sure, there have been plenty of textbooks along the way too, but I want to give some thanks to the people who have directly affected my abilities to do what I do.

And what better way of doing that then by listing them?

A Chronological List of People Who Have Influenced My Coding

  1. My parents, for bringing home our first family computer.  It was an 8088XT IBM Clone – no hard drive, 640K of RAM, dual 5 1/4 floppies…it was awesome.  This is the computer I started coding on – but I couldn’t have started without…
  2. My Uncle Mark and my Aunt Soo.  Both have degrees in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo (that’s where they met).  My recollection is pretty vague, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of the programming texts in my house (a big blue QuickBasic manual comes to mind) surely didn’t come from my parents – must have been those two.  With the book in one hand, and the 8088 in the other, I cranked out stupid little programs, little text adventure games, quizzes, etc.
  3. The online QB community from the late 1990’s to the early 2000’s.  When my family got online, I soon found myself hanging out at NeoZones, in the #quickbasic IRC channel on EFNet… actually, a lot of crazy stuff was being done with QuickBasic back then – I remember when DirectQB came out, and somebody was able to code a raytracer…in BASIC.  It was awesome.  I’d say these were my foundation years, when I learned all of my programming fundamentals.
  4. My friends Nick Braun, Joel Beck, and Doug McQuiggan – these three guys and I used to come up with crazy ideas for games, and I’d try to program them.  I’d come home from school, and pound out code for a computer game for a few hours in the basement.  More often then not, these projects would simply be abandoned, but still, a lot was learned here.
    Joel, Doug, our friend Julian and myself were also members of a band in highschool.  It was my job to build and maintain the band website, and this is when I learned to write HTML, basic Perl, and simple JavaScript.
  5. After highschool, I went into Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.  I didn’t do too well at the Electrical bits, but I could handle myself at the Computer bits.  I learned OOP, Java, and basic design patterns from Prof. James McLean.
  6. I also learned a great deal from Prof. McLean’s course text – Introduction to Computer Science Using Java by Prof. John Carter.  I know I said I wasn’t going to mention textbooks, but I also got taught Discrete Mathematics from Prof. Carter, so I thought I’d toss him in too.
  7. My second (and last) semester in ECE had me taking Programming Fundamentals with Prof. Tarak Abdelrahman.  I learned basic C++ from Prof. Abdelrahman, and how to deal with large systems of code.
  8. After my move to the Arts & Science Faculty, I took my first Computer Science course with Dr. Jim Clarke. I learned about Unit Testing, and more design patterns.  I also eventually learned some basic Python from him, but I think it was in another course.
  9. I took CSC258 with Prof. Eric Hehner, and learned about the structure of computer processors.  Physically, this was a low-level as I’d ever gotten to computers.  I was familiar with writing Assembly from my QB days, but Prof. Hehner’s Opcode exercises were really quite challenging – in a pleasant way.  Also, check out his concept of Quote Notation…
  10. After that year, I spent the first of three summers working for the District School Board of Niagara.  Ken Pidgen was my manager, Mila Shostak was my supervisor.  Ken gave me incredible freedom to work, and soon I was developing web applications, as opposed to just fixing up department websites (as I originally thought I would be doing).  Mila gave me guidance, and showed me how to use CSS to style a website.  She also got me started using PHP and MySQL to create basic web applications.
  11. While working at the Board, I had the pleasure of sitting across from Jong Lee.  Jong and I would bounce ideas off of one another when we’d get stuck on a programming problem.  He was very experienced, and I learned lots of practical programming techniques from him.
  12. Michael Langlois and Ken Redekop acted as my clients at the Board, and always gave me interesting jobs and challenges to perform.Everyone at the Board was always very positive with me, and I’ll always be grateful that they took a newbie undergrad under their wing!  I was given a ridiculous amount of freedom at the Board, and was allowed to experiment with various technologies to get the job done.  Through my three summers there, I learned bits about Rails, CakePHP, MVC, network security, how to deploy an application remotely, how to run a local server, how to develop locally and post to remote, ORM, Flash, web security…so many things.  The list is huge.
  13. Karen Reid and Greg Wilson have been the latest influences on me.  The MarkUs Project was the first project I’ve ever worked on with a team.  It was my first time seriously using version control, my first time using a project management portal (Dr. Project), my first time learning Ruby, and my first time working on an open source project.  I’ve also learned plenty about time management, people, the business of software, and how to get things done.  Again, I’ve been given lots of freedom to learn, experiment, and hone my craft.

Anyhow, these are the people who come to mind.  I might add to this list if I remember anyone else.

But in the mean time, for the people listed above:  thank you.