This document contains notes from a presentation given by Neal Ford on productivity techniques for programmers. Some key topics covered include: accelerating work by using keyboard shortcuts, search over navigation, reducing distractions, applying DRY principles, and automating repetitive tasks. Ford advocates focusing on acceleration, focus, and automation to work more efficiently. He provides many examples of tools and techniques to improve productivity.

1. ThoughtWorks
the productive programer:
mechanics
NEAL FORD software architect / meme wrangler
ThoughtWorks
nford@thoughtworks.com
3003 Summit Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30319
www.nealford.com
www.thoughtworks.com
memeagora.blogspot.com

2. ThoughtWorks

3. where did this topic
come from?
?

4. where did this topic
come from?

5. where did this topic
come from?

6. what i cover:
acceleration
doing stuff faster
focus
killing distractions
automation
getting your computer to work harder
canonicality
applying the dry principle

7. acceleration

8. typing is faster than navigation

9. o/s accelerators
windows explorer address bar (alt-d)
finder (apple-shift-g)
firefox
/ searching
number-fox plugin

10. X
leopard smart help

11. clipboards
why do operating systems have only 1
clipboard with 1 entry????
clcl
iClip ($$)
X
jump cut

12. context switching eats time

13. there and back
pushd pushes a directory on the stack
popd pops it back off
C:temp>pushd MyDocumentsDocumentsdevhaskell
C:MyDocumentsDocumentsdevhaskell>dir
02/13/2006 12:12 AM <DIR> .
02/13/2006 12:12 AM <DIR> ..
02/13/2006 12:12 AM <DIR> nfjs_functionallangs_haskell
0 File(s) 0 bytes
3 Dir(s) 11,743,178,752 bytes free
C:MyDocumentsDocumentsdevhaskell>popd

14. command prompts
graphical explorers better for some things....
...command line better for others
command prompt here power toy
bash here (cygwin)

15. command prompt
explorer bar

16. X
path finder

17. how many of you have
written an application for
heads-down data entry
personnel?

18. when coding, always prefer
keyboard to mouse

19. learning shortcuts
make yourself use the shortcut even if you’ve
gotten there another way
have someone/something pester you about it
pair programmer
key promoter plug-in for intellij
key promoter for eclipse (mousefeed)

20. learning shortcuts
repeat them to yourself
flash cards

21. all our
hierarchies
are too deep:
file system
packages

22. goto class

23. goto class: pattern of
capital letters

24. introduce variable

25. escalating
selection

26. some choice shortcuts
intelliJ eclipse
goto class ctrl-n ctrl-shift-t
introduce variable ctrl-alt-v alt-shift-l
escalating selection ctrl-w alt-shift-up
recently edited files ctrl-e n/a (ctrl-e)
symbol list alt-ctrl-shift-n ctrl-o
incremental search alt-f3 ctrl-j

27. live templates
all major ide’s and coding text editors
parameter substitution, default values, repeating
values
learn the language of your template engine
velocity in intellij
bash for textmate/e editor

28. i t
n e
t m
e p
l l
l a
i t
j e
s

29. every time you type
something for the 3rd time,
templatize it

30. key macro tools
live templates at the o/s level
auto-hot key
textexpander
X
typinator

31. don’t type the same
commands over and over

32. focus

33. simple stuff
get a comfortable chair!
dual monitors...
...sitting immediately in front of you
administrator privilege for the o/s
good keyboard

34. insidious distractions
modern office environments are terrible for
knowledge workers
too much out of context noise
how many people here work in...

35. war rooms

36. locus of attention
in the humane interface, jef raskin describes locus
of attention
anything that happens outside your locus of
attention breaks flow
in flow, michael csikszentmihalyi describes flow
state
total concentration
time disappears

38. killing balloon tips

39. screen dimmers
automatically makes your background dark
after a set time
jedi concentrate
X
doodim

40. the higher the level of
concentration, the denser
the ideas

41. the easy stuff
turn off notifications
don’t keep email open
turn off instant messaging
put on headphones
create office “quiet time”

42. focus techniques

43. search > navigation
all developer hierarchies are too deep
file system
package/namespace
documentation
what worked well with 20 mb hard drives fails
with 200 gb

44. desktop search
built into modern operating systems
retro-fittable in older ones
google desktop search
larry’s “any text file” indexer

45. replace file hierarchy
navigation with search

46. find + grep
from *-nix & cygwin
searches for files within a hierarchy
find
searchs for strings from input or files
grep

47. from the current
directory
pipe through
xargs matching this text
grep with filenames
& line numbers
matching files
named *.java

48. chain together conditions
terminate
execute the following on the exec
all matched files command
placeholder for file name

50. use “hard target” searches
to query your code base

51. what find + grep can’t
provide

52. rooted views
specialized explorer view
especially good for directory-based version
control
rooted view == project explorer
create a shortcut:
C:WINDOWSexplorer.exe /e,/root,c:workproject

55. use virtual desktops
virtual desktops allow you multiple isolated
environments
bind applications to desktops
virtual desktop manager power toy
virtue desktops (in tiger)
X
spaces (in leopard)

57. canonicality

58. DRY says that every piece of system knowledge should have
one authoritative, unambiguous representation. Every piece of
knowledge in the development of something should have a
single representation. A system's knowledge is far broader than
just its code. It refers to database schemas, test plans, the build
system, even documentation.
the pragmatic programmer - andy hunt, dave thomas

59. dry o/r
object-relational mapping is one of the most
common dry violations
database schema + xml configuration + pojo > 1
decide on the canonical representation
generate the others

60. the scenario
<xml>
<entity>
...
</entity>
</xml>
class Person {
int id;
double salary;
...
DDL
}
where’s the information?

61. canonical
representation
<xml>
<entity>
...
</entity>
</xml>
DDL class Person {
int id;
double salary;
...
}

62. the target

63. build event sql map

66. generated sql map

67. step 2: class builder

72. canonical
representation
<xml>
<entity>
...
</entity>
</xml>
DDL class Person {
int id;
double salary;
...
}

73. dry documentation

74. dry diagrams

75. dry schemas
the requirement: entity-relationship diagrams
for each iteration
schemaspy
open source schema diagrammer
written in java
generates acceptable html

76. dry schemas

77. automation

78. obvious automatables
one-command build
continuous integration
version control (!)
documentation

79. don’t build what you don’t
have to build

80. buildix
open source project from ThoughtWorks
infrastructure in a box
live cd or ubuntu installation

81. buildix parts
subversion
cruisecontrol
trac
mingle

82. “A project dedicated to making code
metrics so widely understood, valuable, and
simple that their use becomes ubiquitous,
thus raising the quality of software across
the industry.”

83. panopticode parts
code coverage with emma
1-line change to switch to cobertura
checkstyle
1-line switch for custom rule sets
jdepend
javancss
volatility

84. panopticode parts
code duplication using simian
panopticode aggregator
panopticode reports
treemaps

85. code coverage tree map

86. dbDeploy
migrations for the rest of the world
jolt-award winner open source from
ThoughtWorks london
version database schema changes along with
code
builds delta scripts for you

87. using dbDeploy
someone (dba) creates a sql baseline
developers create delta scripts for each change
dbDeploy compares delta with patch table
generates change scripts
invoked from ant’s sql task

88. use migrations to manage
database schema changes

89. subverting other tools

90. selenium
open source tool for user acceptance testing of
web applications
includes a side-project called selenium ide
allows you to automate debugging “wizard”-
style web applications
you always think “this is the last time”...
...but it never is!

92. automated interaction
record your interaction the 1st time you walk
through the page
literally cuts hours off debugging time
selenium defines an interaction api for web
applications
have your q/a department record bug
discoveries

93. don’t spend time doing by
hand what you can automate

94. build your own tools

95. you almost never do anything just once
work like a craftsman, not a laborer
build shims & jigs
building a tool takes a little longer than brute
force...
...but you build assets

96. bash-fu
adding new files to subversion repository
tortoise (on windows), but with limits

97. svnAddNew
svn st | grep '^?' | tr '^?' ' ' |
sed 's/ [ ]*//' | sed 's/[ ]/ /g' | xargs svn add
get svn status (new files start with “?”)
svn st
find all new files
grep '^?'
translate the “?” into a space
tr '^?' ' '
substitute spaces to nothing
sed 's/[ ]*//'
escape embedded spaces
sed 's/[ ]/ /g'
pipe the improved arguments into svn
xargs svn add

98. more bash-fu
the problem: 2 gb of log files / week
need to know the count of each exception type
by hand?!?
automate with a bash script

99. get all exception types from log file
sort them
get unique
list
get counts of each
exception

100. windows scripting host

101. windows power shell
powerful replacement for windows scripting
host
uses objects the way *-nix uses plain text
pipe properties from 1 command to another

102. comparisons
bash
wps
bash
wps

103. implemented with .net
use .net types within power shell scripts

104. cmdlets
Get-Command Retrieves a list of all available cmdlets.
Get-Help Displays help information about cmdlets and concepts.
Get-WMIObject Retrieves management information by using WMI.
Get-EventLog Retrieves Windows event logs.
Get-Process Retrieves a single or list of active processes.
Get-Service Retrieves a Windows service.
Get-Content Reads in text files, treating each line as a child object.
Add-Content Appends content to a text file.
Copy-Item Copies an item
Get-Acl Retrieves access control lists (ACLs).

105. just one thing...
windows power shell implemented in .net
take advantage of .net types and libraries
.net coupled to every nook & cranny in
windows
“headless” longhorn arriving rsn
won’t have windows power shell!

106. automating com

107. scripting rationale
examples in lots of different languages/tools
which one do I use for this problem?
use a real language for scripting

108. sql splitter
the problem: split a 38,000 line sql file into
1000 line chunks
each chunk must be syntactically correct
“we can do it by hand in 10 minutes...”
automate instead
after 50 minutes:

110. time spent automating
it took us 5 times longer to automate it
we’ve had to do it numerous times since
it “accidentally” became an important part of
our project
using a real language allowed us to refactor it...
...so that we could write unit tests

112. using real languages
allow throw-aways to grow into assets
allows unit testing, refactoring, ide support
if you start by treating it as a 1st class problem,
you’ll build better solutions

113. time savings
solving problems by hand makes you dumber
steals concentration
squanders focus
automating makes you smarter
figure out clever ways to solve problems

114. justifying automation

115. timebox
set a reasonable time to see if it’s possible
evaluate at the end of the box
decide if you want to go forward
or create another time box
or abandon the effort

116. analyze the r.o.i.
how long does it take now X # of times we
must do it?
what are the consequences of doing it wrong 1
time?
automation is about
time savings
risk mitigation

117. don’t shave yaks!

118. ThoughtWorks
questions?
please fill out the session evaluations
slides & samples available at nealford.com
NEAL FORD software architect / meme wrangler
ThoughtWorks
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
nford@thoughtworks.com
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. 3003 Summit Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30319
www.nealford.com
www.thoughtworks.com
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ memeagora.blogspot.com

119. ThoughtWorks
resources
The Productive Programmer
© 2008, Neal Ford
Published by O’Reilly Media
ISBN: 978-0-596-51978-0
Photos by Candy Ford