How to write code with few bugs?
Summary
TLDRThis video script discusses strategies for writing code with minimal bugs, emphasizing the importance of understanding automated testing, including unit, integration, and visual regression testing. It highlights the significance of the testing pyramid and the need for a comprehensive approach to software delivery, from development to production. The speaker shares real-world examples to illustrate common pitfalls and suggests using feature flagging and blue-green deployment to mitigate risks. The script concludes by advocating for simplicity in code to reduce complexity and potential bugs.
Takeaways
- π **Understand Automated Testing**: The importance of automated testing, including unit, integration, and visual regression testing, is emphasized to ensure each layer of the application works as expected.
- π **Learn the Testing Pyramid**: Familiarize yourself with the testing pyramid to understand the different levels of testing and how they are applied in your specific tech stack.
- π οΈ **Know Your Stack's Tools**: Gain knowledge of the tools commonly used in your tech stack for effective bug detection and management at various levels.
- π¦ **Bugs are Unintended Behaviors**: Recognize that bugs are simply unintended behaviors that can affect user experience, and understanding this can help in identifying potential failure points.
- π **Environment Synchronization**: Ensure that updates across different environments are synchronized to prevent inconsistencies that can lead to production issues.
- π« **Prevent Temporary Outages**: Utilize strategies like feature flagging and blue-green deployment to avoid temporary outages during updates.
- π **Continuous Learning**: Acquire a full-stack understanding to effectively manage the software delivery process and mitigate potential production issues.
- π‘οΈ **Implement Fail-Safes**: Apply necessary safeguards such as health checks and redundancies to handle potential failures in production.
- π **Rollbacks and Redundancies**: Prepare for the possibility of bugs by having rollback procedures and redundancy systems in place.
- π **Simplicity in Code**: Write simple and stable code to reduce complexity and the likelihood of bugs, especially in the delivery process.
- π **Consider Global Issues**: Be aware of potential issues like character encoding that can affect users globally and ensure your application is prepared for such scenarios.
Q & A
What is the primary focus of the discussion in the video script?
-The primary focus of the discussion is on the best approaches to write code with very few bugs, emphasizing the importance of understanding automated testing and the testing pyramid.
Why is automated testing crucial in reducing bugs in software development?
-Automated testing is crucial because it helps to ensure that each layer of the application is working as expected, thus preventing unintended behavior that affects the user experience.
What is the testing pyramid and why is it important?
-The testing pyramid is a concept that illustrates the different levels of testing in software development, from unit tests at the base to UI tests and end-to-end tests at the top. It's important because it helps developers understand the general tools and patterns used to deal with bugs at different levels.
What is an example of a production issue mentioned in the script?
-An example of a production issue mentioned is when a developer updated the base URL of an application without coordinating with the operations team, leading to a broken load balancer and incorrect routing, which caused the entire application to fail.
Why did the QA environment not help in the scenario described with the developer updating the base URL?
-The QA environment did not help because the issue was related to the front-end routing and the developer did not consider how to synchronize the updates of the routing with the production environment, leading to a temporary outage.
What is feature flagging and how can it help in reducing bugs?
-Feature flagging is a technique that allows developers to enable or disable features without deploying new code. It helps in reducing bugs by allowing for a safer deployment process, such as blue-green deployments, where a new version of the code can be tested before fully replacing the old one.
What is the significance of understanding the entire delivery process from code writing to production?
-Understanding the entire delivery process is significant because it allows developers to identify potential points of failure and implement necessary fail-safes, thus reducing the likelihood of bugs in production.
What is the importance of writing simple code to minimize bugs?
-Writing simple code is important because it reduces unnecessary complexity in the delivery process, making it easier to manage and less prone to introducing bugs.
Can you provide an example of a common mistake that leads to bugs, as mentioned in the script?
-An example of a common mistake is when developers forget to consider the execution environment or logical errors, such as not properly importing code libraries into a Docker container, leading to a broken container build.
What strategies are suggested for dealing with bugs in production?
-Strategies suggested include using feature flagging, implementing redundancies like multiple availability zones, running end-to-end tests in production, and ensuring that there are checks and health monitors for running code.
Why is it recommended to have more than one availability zone when dealing with cloud providers?
-Having more than one availability zone is recommended to provide redundancy and increase the reliability of the application, ensuring that if one zone goes down, the application can still function in another zone.
Outlines
π¬ Best Practices for Writing Bug-Free Code
The speaker emphasizes the importance of automated testing as a fundamental approach to minimize bugs in software development. They introduce the concept of the testing pyramid and suggest understanding the tools and patterns specific to one's tech stack. The narrative includes a real-world example where a lack of communication between development and operations teams led to a production failure due to an untested environment. The speaker advocates for feature flagging and blue-green deployment strategies to ensure backward compatibility and prevent downtime during updates.
π Understanding the Delivery Pipeline to Reduce Bugs
This paragraph delves into the complexities of the software delivery process and the potential for bugs at various stages. The speaker recounts an incident where a developer's update caused a Docker container to fail due to incorrect library paths. The importance of understanding the entire code journey from development to production is highlighted, along with the necessity of implementing fail-safes like automated testing, health checks, and feature flagging. The speaker also stresses the value of writing simple code to reduce unnecessary complexity and the potential for bugs.
π Comprehensive Knowledge for Minimizing Software Bugs
The final paragraph underscores the need for developers to be well-informed about the full spectrum of tools and strategies available to prevent bugs. It discusses the importance of continuous learning in areas such as site reliability engineering. The speaker provides advice on creating a robust system for checking and rectifying issues at each step of the software delivery process. They also mention the significance of keeping the code simple and having strategies in place for production environments, such as end-to-end testing and feature toggling, to ensure software reliability.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Automated Testing
π‘Testing Pyramid
π‘Unit Testing
π‘Integration Testing
π‘Visual Regression Testing
π‘Feature Flagging
π‘Blue-Green Deployment
π‘Backwards Compatibility
π‘Code Simplicity
π‘Environment Consistency
π‘SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)
Highlights
The importance of understanding automated testing, including unit testing and integration testing, to reduce bugs.
The significance of the testing pyramid and its role in identifying the right tools for different testing levels.
The necessity for developers to comprehend the layers of the application that can fail and how to assert each layer's functionality.
The example of a production issue caused by an update to the base URL not being checked with the operations team.
The concept of feature flagging and blue-green deployment as a safeguard against production issues.
The importance of understanding the entire delivery process from code writing to production to identify potential failure points.
The example of a Docker container issue due to a path problem with code libraries not being imported correctly.
The necessity for developers to consider the execution environment and potential logical errors in their code.
The role of health checks in identifying outages in production and the importance of fail-safes.
The recommendation to have more than one availability zone for redundancy, especially when dealing with cloud providers.
The strategy of using feature flagging, rollbacks, and redundancies to mitigate production issues.
The emphasis on writing simple code to reduce unnecessary complexity and potential bugs.
The example of encoding format issues leading to broken text for non-UTF characters in a database.
The need for a comprehensive understanding of the software delivery process and its components to prevent bugs.
The importance of having a gateway system to check the functionality at each step of the delivery process.
The role of unit testing in ensuring the logical correctness of newly written code.
The value of automated testing before production deployment to catch issues like container failures early.
The strategies for ensuring code works correctly in production, including end-to-end testing and feature flagging.
Transcripts
hey guys so today you and I are going to
talk about
very few bugs so let's get into it so
the question in question was hi
Frederick what are the best approaches
to write code with very few bugs
well uh there are a few tried and true
patterns for how to do this
and I'll I'll try to basically give you
sort of those tips and tricks that I
usually use in order to try to reduce it
down to the bare minimum that I can can
sustain
so first and foremost you need to
understand automated testing hopefully
that is no-brainer for those of you who
have been doing some professional work
basically that means unit testing and
Trend testing if you have a UI of some
sort of visual regression testing
etc etc there are many patterns for how
to do this but in essence it's good for
you to take a look at the testing
pyramid and have an understanding of
what every stack you're using what is
the general way that people use like
what are the general tools that your
specific stack leverages in order to
deal at with the bugs at different
levels because this is a very important
factor a bug is unintained it's just
unintended Behavior at some part of the
application that somehow affects the
user experience the reason why I say
that it might sound obvious but it's
actually very important is that you have
to understand as a software developer
what layers of the application can fail
and how do you assert that each
individual layer is working as expected
this is very complicated
and the reason I can give you an example
so I was working with a developer of
mine
a few a while back we I asked this this
person was updating making an update to
the
base URL of of an application
and so in the code review he had written
unit tests like he had made sure that he
had tested everything you know in like
properly all the like end-to-end tests
had been passing and Etc so basically
the whole suite and he
had done quote unquote all the things
that on a normal story he was expected
to do
and then he pushes like he merges this
code sends it out into production boom
production issue immediately
uh the reason being why that in what it
had why what happens is that the update
that he had made had not been checked
with the operations team which meant
that the load balancer that he was
basically in back behind that forwards
all the requests was not updated and
also so the routing wasn't happening
correctly which meant the whole
application broke because there was an
environment which in which he had not
been attested before he released which
was the production environment
now I talked to him about this and I he
said oh well because in this case
scenario he he said yeah it would have
been great if we had a QA environment or
a test environment before we pushed this
thing so I could have tested it in that
environment and I went that wouldn't
have helped you
because the real this was in this case
it was a front-end Rover because and I
said the reason why I wouldn't have
helped you was because when you have
pushed would you would have pushed it to
the QA environment
yes very likely you would have seen a
breakage and you would have seen that
you needed to update the routing of this
thing
but the question is would you have known
how to
do that for production as well you might
have known that you needed to make the
update for production as well but how
would you do it in this manner because
in this specific manner like there was
no way to synchronize the updates of the
routing at the same time as pushing into
production in other words there's a
window where something is inconsistent
either the routing is not going to work
or the application is not going to be
updated so something's going to be
broken for a little window of time in in
theory basically and so what he and I
started talking about was that okay so
how do you Safeguard yourself from not
making a mistake like this and I said
well it's very simple you have to
understand how to in this case the like
I can give you the short answer feature
flagging basically where you need to be
able to do a blue green type of
deployment thing where you need to be
able to
spin up a new version of the code like
basically a backwards compatibility
make sure that all the traffic hits the
new application and then degrade the old
one because if you don't do that you're
basically in a situation where as I said
you have temporary outage
and maybe that's fine and in the
scenario it wasn't a big deal but that's
the sort of thinking that you need to
have when you're trying to figure out
how to reduce the amount of bugs you
have because the the bugs that guys
bikes can happen in so so so many ways
and so it's really important for you to
have an understanding of the impacts
like like all the parts that make up
everything from how you get the code
from your laptop all the way into the
production environment and when it's
actually running in production this
takes years
and it's a full stack knowledge level
that is required to do this effectively
to to really do it effectively I had
another co-worker the other day who made
a update to the source code
was very happy with it had written unit
tests etc etc and then he pushed it and
luckily for us we had automated testing
that in this case it was a Docker
container everything was running in so
the docker container was trying to be
run and this is where you want to have
something like automated testing before
things go out into production which is
in this case it was so the container was
trying to be built and then it's frozen
error because the change that he had
made was only the bug only existed
basically here in a routing problem not
a routing problem he had a path problem
to certain libraries code libraries that
he was depending on those code libraries
were not being imported into the
Container correctly so now the container
broke
and when he made the change
he didn't think about that because he
didn't think about the next step okay
what happens when this thing goes into
the next container now this is the main
reason why bugs happen guys the
developers are forgetting about some
execution environment or like there
might be a logical error Etc so there's
tons of ways for this to happen but for
you to understand how the testing
Pyramid has to work
you have to also understand all the
things that are going to happen between
you wrote the code in your on your
workstation all the way until it's out
in production and what can possibly go
wrong when it is in production and apply
the necessary fail safes in order to
deal with that problem so as I said unit
test that's what the junior learns
that's the first step just to make sure
that the thing that you just wrote
doesn't like logically break somehow
then the next thing is integration test
you need to be able to connect to
systems or something like that to make
sure that the system still works then
you might have health checks because
something might you know if something's
running in production you don't know
maybe something there's an outage
somewhere and some service Goes Down And
if you don't know about it well then
it's down and your system is now you
know there's a bug there's a temporary
outage etc etc and then you have
questions about okay so if now something
breaks into production how do you
actually go back from that how do you
save yourself from that that's for
feature flagging for example can be in
all alternative you can have multiple
redundancies with like this is one of
the reasons why we recommend usually to
have more than one
you know availability zone or something
like that if you're dealing with Cloud
providers etc etc there's tons and tons
and tons of weight everything from
rollbacks to redundancies to Future
flagging to like backwards compatibility
uh like graceful degradation etc etc and
in order for you to write a few bugs as
as possible you basically need to know
as I said how does the entire delivery
look like what can go wrong in
production and what are the remedies
that you can apply in order to mitigate
those sorts of problems and I'll give
you one more which is a very important
one make sure that the code that you are
writing is simple
the reason why I say that it might sound
simply and like obvious but the reason
why I say that is because the simpler
you can design the code
the less likely you are to create
unnecessary complexity around the
delivery process if you have the option
of picking something that is very simple
very stable something that like where
you're basically just trying to keep
down the complexity of what you're doing
that's always almost always a good
investment for you because a lot of
these like the more complex as I was
saying with these two examples the more
complicated your environment is the more
of things you have to keep in mind
whenever you're doing the coding because
as you can imagine it's almost
impossible for you to sit there and go
yeah I wrote I changed an example would
be I changed the uh symbols here like I
I added a few classic one is a German
signs so like something like a German
characters or Chinese characters or
something like that here in this little
text here that's going to be translated
I wonder if we have the right game for
the encoding format in our database
which is another one that I've found as
well like we've I've been working on
projects where literally they have the
wrong encoding format they store things
in the incorrect format and send it back
to us so all we get is this little like
you know the placeholder
symbol for all of the non-utf I don't
remember which encoding they were using
but basically it was okay we had to show
broken text to all of our customers from
Germany etc etc because they had not
considered that this would have been a
problem so what I want you to take away
from this is that the way that you write
as few bugs as possible is number one
you have to get yourself informed of the
main testing tools you usually use the
common ones or you know unit testing and
then testing visual regression testing
feature flagging things like that but
there's more to it because it's a minute
guys it's a whole education to learn all
this sort of stuff this is sort of what
the site reliability engineers and
things like you know there's there's an
entire job to master all of this stuff
right but that is basically what it
comes down to because what you have to
understand is that there is
no like like the entire way from your
laptop all the way up
to how something is running in
production can break
and the best way for you to reduce the
amount of bugs is for you to create a
Gateway system where you know that you
have a proven way to determine at each
step of the delivery process
if something is working if it's working
correctly and some way to rectify the
problem if something did not
function correctly so as I was saying in
production environments you have a few
strategies at the code level you have a
few strategies and there's tons of this
stuff but basically try to keep things
as simple as possible and then inform
yourself about all right how do I make
sure that all quote unquote things that
can go wrong with my code have been
accounted for and that there is some way
for me to check if that thing is
actually working
unit test is a good start making sure
that you know your containers and your
production bills are working correctly
making sure that you have some type of
way of checking the running code before
it goes on into production is a good
investment making sure that as I said
visual regression testing or end-to-end
testing like features are working even
in like a QA environment doesn't have to
be a queue environment and then when
things are in production make sure that
things are working in production there's
tons of different ways of doing that
everything from running end to end
testing production to you know pinging
things or you know doing feature
flagging and turning features on and off
etc etc there's a whole like there's so
much content related to this guys so the
I suggest that you have a look but keep
that fundamental thing with you the most
important thing is that you understand
how your software it goes from your
laptop all the way out into production
and all the things that are happening as
part of that process because then you
know what all the components are and how
they in their unique way can fail you
have a great day
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)