Christian Heilmann

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Archive for July, 2016

Why ChakraCore matters

Wednesday, July 27th, 2016

People who have been in the web development world for a long time might remember A List Apart’s posts from 16 years ago talking about “Why $browser matters”. In these posts, Zeldman explained how the compliance with web standards and support for new features made some browsers stand out, even if they don’t have massive market share yet.

fruit stand
Variety is the spice of life

These browsers became the test bed for future-proof solutions. Solutions that later on already were ready for a larger group of new browsers. Functionality that made the web much more exciting than the one of old. The web we built for one browser and relied on tried-and-true, yet hacky solutions like table layouts. These articles didn’t praise a new browser with flashy new functionality. Browsers featured in this series were the ones compliant with upcoming and agreed standards. That’s what made them important.

The web thrives on diversity. Not only in people, but also in engines. We would not be where we are today if we had stuck with one browser engine. We would not enjoy the openness and free availability of our technologies if Mozilla hadn’t showed that you can be open and a success. The web thrives on user choice and on tool choice for developers.

Competition makes us better and our solutions more creative. Standardisation makes it possible for users of our solutions to maintain them. To upgrade them without having to re-write them from scratch. Monoculture brings quick success but in the long run always ends in dead code on the web that has nowhere to execute. As the controlled, solution-to-end-all-solutions changed from underneath the developers without backwards compatibility.

Today my colleague Arunesh Chandra announced at the NodeSummit in San Francisco that ChakraCore, the open source JavaScript engine of Microsoft, in part powering the Microsoft Edge browser is available now for Linux and OSX.

Screen captures showing ChakraCore running inside terminal windows on Ubuntu 16.04 and OS X
ChakraCore on Linux and OS X

This is a huge step for Microsoft, who – like any other company – is a strong believer in its own products. It also does well keeping their developers happy by sticking to what they are used to. It is nothing they needed to do to stay relevant. But it is something that is the right thing to do to ensure that the world of Node also has more choice and is not dependent on one predominant VM. Many players in the market see the benefits of Node and want to support it, but are not sold on a dependency on one JavaScript VM. A few are ready to roll out their own VMs, which cater to special needs, for example in the IoT space.

This angers a few people in the Node world. They worry that with several VMs, the “browser hell” of “supporting all kind of environment” will come to Node. Yes, it will mean having to support more engines. But it is also an opportunity to understand that by using standardised code, ratified by the TC39, your solutions will be much sturdier. Relying on specialist functionality of one engine always means that you are dependent on it not changing. And we are already seeing far too many Node based solutions that can’t upgrade to the latest version as breaking changes would mean a complete re-write.

ChakraCore matters the same way browsers that dared to support web standards mattered. It is a choice showing that to be future proof, Node developers need to be ready to allow their solutions to run on various VMs. I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. It took the web a few years to understand the value of standards and choice. Much rhetoric was thrown around on either side. I hope that with the great opportunity that Node is to innovate and use ECMAScript for everything we will get there faster and with less dogmatic messaging.

Photo by Ian D. Keating

A great time and place to ask about diversity and inclusion

Monday, July 18th, 2016

whiteboard code

There isn’t a single day going by right now where you can’t read a post or see a talk about diversity and inclusiveness in our market. And that’s a great thing. Most complain about the lack of them. And that’s a very bad thing.

It has been proven over and over that diverse teams create better products. Our users are all different and have different needs. If your product team structure reflects that you’re already one up against the competition. You’re also much less likely to build a product for yourself – and we are not our end users.

Let’s assume we are pro-diversity and pro-inclusiveness. And it should be simple for us – we come from a position of strength:

  • We’re expert workers and we get paid well.
  • We are educated and we have companies courting us and looking after our needs once we have been hired.
  • We’re not worried about being able to pay our bills or random people taking our jobs away.

I should say yet, because automation is on the rise and even our jobs can be optimised away sooner or later. Some of us are even working on that.

For now, though, we are in a very unique position of power. There are not enough expert workers to fill the jobs. We have job offers thrown at us and our hiring bonuses, perks and extra offers are reaching ridiculous levels. When you tell someone outside our world about them, you get shocked looks. We’re like the investment bankers and traders of the eighties and we should help to ensure that our image won’t turn into the same they have now.

If we really want to change our little world and become a shining beacon of inclusion, we need not to only talk about it – we should demand it. A large part of the lack of diversity in our market is that it is not part of our hiring practices. The demands to our new hires make it very hard for someone not from a privileged background or with a degree from a university of standing to get into our market. And that makes no sense. The people who can change that is us – the people in the market who tick all the marks.

To help the cause and make the things we demand in blog posts and keynotes happen, we should bring our demands to the table when and where they matter: in job interviews and application processes.

Instead of asking for our hardware, share options and perks like free food and dry cleaning we should ask for the things that really matter:

  • What is the maternity leave process in the company? Can paternity leave be matched? We need to make it impossible for an employer to pick a man over a woman because of this biological reason.
  • Why is a degree part of the job? I have none and had lots of jobs that required one. This seems like an old requirement that just got copied and pasted because of outdated reasons.
  • What is the long term plan the company has for me? We kept getting asked where we see ourselves in five years. This question has become cliché by now. Showing that the company knows what to do with you in the long term shows commitment, and it means you are not a young and gifted person to be burned out and expected to leave in a year.
  • Is there a chance for a 4 day week or flexible work hours? For a young person it is no problem doing an 18 hours shift in an office where all is provided for you. As soon as you have children all kind of other things add to your calendar that can’t me moved.
  • What does this company do to ensure diversity? This might be a bit direct, but it is easy to weed out those that pay lip service.
  • What is the process to move in between departments in this company? As you get older and you stay around for longer, you might want to change career. A change in your life might make that necessary. Is the company supporting this?
  • Is there a way to contribute to hiring and resourcing even when you are not in HR? This could give you the chance to ask the right questions to weed out applicants that are technically impressive but immature or terrible human beings.
  • What is done about accessibility in the internal company systems? I worked for a few companies where internal systems were inaccessible to visually impaired people. Instead of giving them extra materials we should strive for making internal systems available out-of-the-box.
  • What is the policy on moving to other countries or working remotely? Many talented people can not move or don’t want to start a new life somewhere else. And they shouldn’t have to. This is the internet we work on.
  • What do you do to prevent ageism in the company? A lot of companies have an environment that is catering to young developers. Is the beer-pong table really a good message to give?

I’ve added these questions to a repo on GitHub, please feel free to add more questions if you find them.

FWIW, I started where I am working right now because I got good answers to questions like these. My interviews were talking to mixed groups of people telling me their findings as teams and not one very aggressive person asking me to out-code them. It was such a great experience that I started here, and it wasn’t a simple impression. The year I’ve worked here now proved that even in interviewing, diversity very much matters.

Photo Credit: shawncplus

Things not to say on stage at a tech event

Wednesday, July 6th, 2016

cringing woman

This is also available on Medium

This is not about a post about trigger words or discriminatory expressions. There is a lot of information about this available, and even some excellent linting tools for your texts. It is also not about unconscious bias. Or well, maybe it is. Learned bias for sure.

This is a post about some sentences used in technical presentations that sound encouraging. In reality they may exclude people in the audience and make them feel bad about their level of knowledge. These are the following sentences and I’ll explain in detail how to replace them with something less destructive:

None of these are a show-stopper and make you a terrible presenter. There may even be ways to use them that are not confusing and destructive. This is language, and in some cultures they may be OK to use. I’m not here to tell people off. I am here to make you aware that something that sounds good might make people feel bad. And that’s not what we’re here for as presenters.

As a presenter your job is not only to give out technical information. You also need to inspire and to entertain. Often you overshoot the mark by simplifying things and trying to hard to please.

It is important to remind ourselves that we can not assume much of our audience. The room might be full of experts, but the video recording is also going out to everybody. Explaining things in a simple fashion is not dumbing them down. It may actually be the hardest task there is for a presenter.

It is stressful to be at an expert event. As an audience member you don’t want to appear less able than others. As a presenter, it is worse. Presenting is a balancing act. You neither want to sound condescending, overload the audience, make people feel stupid, appear too basic … and, and, and…

I’ve heard the following expressions at a lot of events and I always cringed a bit. Often they are OK, and no harm done. But,to improve as presenters it may be a good idea to be more conscious about what we do and what effects it can have.

“This is easy…”

We often try to calm down the audience by making what we show appear simple. The problem with that is that what is simple for us might still be confusing to the people in the room. Add peer-pressure to that and people will neither speak up that they don’t understand, nor feel empowered. The opposite applies – by saying something is easy and people failing to grasp or apply it, we make them feel stupid. If you make me feel stupid, you may inspire me to get better. But I don’t do it for the right reason – I do it out of guilt and self-doubt.

The worst way to use “this is easy” is when you rely on a lot of abstractions or tools to achieve the easy bit. Each of those could be a stumbling block for people applying your wisdom.

Replacements:

  • “Here are a few steps how to achieve this…”
  • “By using these tools, which are all well documented, you can…”
  • “The way to get this done is…”

Using these you send people on a journey. They don’t tell them that the end result is already a given. Who knows, they may find a way to improve your “easy” one.

“I’ll repeat quickly, for the few of you who don’t know…”

This expression just fell at a conference I attended and it made me cringe. The presenter meant to be encouraging in a “hey, we all are already on board” way, but it can come across as arrogant. Even worse, it already singles out those who do not know, and makes them feel like they are under a spotlight.

If the intention is to do a quick intro on what you want to build upon, it is better to phrase it as a reminder, not a “you already know, what am I doing here”.

Replacements

  • “Just as a reminder, here is what $x is about…”
  • “As you may remember, $x is about…”
  • “We’re building this using $x, which is…”

This adds your repetition into the flow instead of being an excuse.

“Everybody can do that…”

If everybody can do it, why do I listen to you? Also, if everybody can do it, how come I never managed to? If you use this you either present something basic, or you over-simplify a complex matter. The latter can appear to be empowering; you take away the fear of approaching something. But, it backfires when people can’t use it. Then you exclude them from “everybody”. And that hurts.

Replacements:

  • “If you know your way around $x, $y and $z, you should find it easy to…”
  • “Once you managed to do that, you’ll find it makes the rest of your work easier…”
  • “It is a very effective way to work, if it works for you, tell others about it”

This again makes it a reminder and a starting point of a journey. Not a given that is redundant to repeat.

“$x solves this problem, so you don’t have to worry about it”

Hooray for your product – it solves everything. Now buy it and impress people with wisdom you don’t have. And feel worse when you get praised for it. This is a classic sales pitch which works with end user products. As a developer you should always worry about what you use in your products as each part can become an issue. And it will be up to you to fix it.

Replacements

  • “$x solves the problems around $y, so you can build $z”
  • “$x was created to make $y easier and is used in production, the results are encouraging…”
  • “Here are the steps you can do by hand that $x does for you…”

Pop open the hood, show how your product works. Don’t sell all-healing remedies.

“As everybody knows…”

Common knowledge is a myth and relies on your environment, access to information, time to consume news and the way you learn. Presenting something as common knowledge may make people think “so how come I ever heard of it?” and stop them in their tracks.

Replacements:

  • “This has been around for a while and was explained wonderfully in $x ($x being a resource you link to)”
  • “Tests have shown that $x is a given for a lot of solutions (point to research, give proof)”
  • “I base this on the fact that $x, as proven many times by… (and add a list a resources)”

“Citation needed” is a wonderful way to say something and prove your point. You show people that you did your homework before you make an assumption. And you give those who did not the tools to do so.

“This is just like we learned in school…”

This assumes everybody went to a school with the same curriculum as you. A lot of people have not. This is especially destructive when it applies to knowledge that was part of a Computer Science degree.

Replacements:

  • “This has been part of Computer Science teaching for years, and for good reason because $x”
  • “This should look familiar to anyone who went to a similar school as me, and for those who didn’t, there’s truckloads of information available online about it”
  • “You might remember this from school – now you see how it can be applied in a real job. Who knew?”

A lot of people create the web. Not all took the official path.

“That’s why $y(your product) is much better than (competitor) $x”

This is common in advertising, especially in America. You show off your product by making others look worse. This is pointless and only invites criticism and retaliation by others. As a tech presenter, you should know that the other product is also built by people. Final decision of what gets shipped are not always based on technical merit. It is a cheap shot.

Replacements:

  • “Here’s how to do that with product $x, we took a different path and here’s why…”
  • “There are many solutions to this. We found that some were lacking a feature that made us more effective, which is $x”
  • “You can use whatever makes you happy to achieve $x. We added the following, as we found it was missing…”

Showing you know about your competition prevents questions about it. Showing how they differ allows people to make up their mind which is better instead of you telling them and hoping they agree.

“This can be done in a few lines of code…”

The amount of code has become a contrived way of showing how effective our solutions are. Almost always the “quick and small solution” blossoms into a much larger one once it is used in production. It makes much more pragmatic sense to tell people that this is inevitable, and praise the small starting point for what it is – a start.

Replacements:

  • “As you can see, starting this is a few lines of code. I simplified this to show here, the source code is available at $x”
  • “For now, this is all that is needed to achieve this. No doubt, you will need to add more to it, but it is a starting point”
  • “By abstracting some of the issues out, we can cut down our code to a few lines”
  • “As we rely on functionality of $x, this means our implementation can be very small…”

A lot of times, this solves our own issue of showing only a few lines of code on a slide. Instead, let’s write understandable code that we explain in sections rather than one magical tidbit.

“If you want to be professional, do $x”

People have different opinions what a “professional” is. Whilst we worry about quality and maintenance, other people put more merit on fast delivery. The state of the art changes all the time, and a sentence like this can look silly in a few weeks.

Replacements:

  • “$x, $y and $z are using this heavily to deliver their products. Here are some case studies that show the positive results…”
  • “Using $x gives you a starting point you can rely on and makes it easier to explain to your replacement how to take over the product…”
  • “The benefits of $x are $y, which makes it a professional tool to use…”

You achieve professionalism with experience and by learning about new thing and retaining them. Things people say on stage and define as “best practice” need validation by professionals. It is not up to you as a presenter to define that.

A quick check

There are more unintentional destructive expressions. Read through your talks and watch your videos and then ask yourself: “how would I feel listening to this if I didn’t know what I know?”. Then remove or rephrase accordingly.

Our market grew as fast as it did by being non-discriminatory of background or level of education. Granted, most of us grew up in safe environments and were lucky enough to have free schooling. But there are a lot of people in our midst who came from nowhere or at least nowhere near computer science. And they do great work. I’d go so far as to say that the diversity of backgrounds made the web what it is now: a beautiful mess that keeps evolving into who knows what. It is anything but boring. There is never “one way” to reach a goal. We discovered a lot of our solutions by celebrating different points of view.

Photo by alyona_fedotova