We Houstonians also have another side of life, where spaghetti does not mean unstructured code and achieving the sprint goal is not the only thing on your mind. Many of us spend our free time doing endurance sports, horseback riding, playing floorball, tennis, golf etc. Houston is eager to sponsor us in these great activities to balance our work life.

“I got the possibility to attend the GR10 Xtrem ultra trail competition in Valencia”

I got the possibility to attend the GR10 Xtrem ultra trail competition in Valencia, Spain on the 14th of January 2012. It is an ultra distance run (93 km) in the mountains with 3800m of positive altitude change and 3000m negative altitude change. A tough race that is not completed in one sprint for sure.

Race on!

The story began when my colleague Miia at our client mentioned she was going to attend the event next month with her friends Sanna and Ilkka. “Wanna join” she asked? I was not able to resist. The registration was done the same day.

The Race

14th of January, Valencia, Spain. Miia, Sanna, Ilkka and I woke up around 4.30 am on the race morning after sleeping the night on the floor of a multisport center near Valencia. I felt full of energy maybe because of the huge amount of spaghetti and pasta for carbo-loading earlier that week. The only thing I needed before the start was one breadroll and a cup of espresso to get my legs moving.

“The first 30 km went incredibly fast.”

The opening shoot was at 6 am. About 300 runners started their journey. It was still dark and we all had headlights on. Usually my body is like a diesel engine: doesn’t want to start in the beginning, but when it gets moving, it wont stop. Today it felt the opposite. I needed to hold back constantly not to go too fast. If I wanted to run fast, I’d better do it at the end when one surely doesn’t have any extra energy. Well, no worries, soon after we reached the forest all the runners stopped for almost half an hour. There was a huge climbing ahead. Everyone had to climb it one by one. The most difficult terrain was at the beginning of the race. The first 30 km went incredibly fast. Ilkka and I agreed that it felt too easy. It felt easy, because we ran quite slowly and had not any strict time targets. Just the twenty-hour time limit that was the maximum time runners could use for the race.

Running during the night.

“Enjoy the journey, not the destination.”

This landscape outside of Valencia was incredibly beautiful – a lot of orange gardens, olive groves and nice little villages that we passed. “Enjoy the journey, not the destination”, I reminded myself. The sun was shining and the temperature was around +15C at daytime and about 0C in the evening. Perfect for running! Every time we passed some of those beautiful villages, local people were catering to us. There was a nice atmosphere all the time.

 “Go Finlandia!”

The first 40 km I ran together with Ilkka. Miia and Sanna ran about half an hour behind us. Just before the 50 km mark was passed, Ilkka and I separated and ran on our own. Till 70 km I ran with various Spanish people. Most of them didn’t speak any English, but with those who did I chatted quite a lot. Those who didn’t speak English just cheered “Go Finlandia!”. Everyone was smiling. After 75 km I ran mostly alone. It was already about 8 pm. Darkness came incredibly fast. Most of the time I didn’t see any lights other than the stars and my headlight. I had to concentrate not to get lost. The route signs were quite small and sometimes hard too see. After the race I heard that some people had gotten lost during the race.

 “I already heard the music from the last village”

Suddenly, I saw the lights of the village. It was the second last village we had to pass before the finish line. It was a small village, I saw just a few people there in the street who were cheering for us. I already heard the music from the last village, where the finish line was located. I headed from the forest path to the street and saw the signs to go forward. I started to run faster on the street, made the last turn to the left and saw the finish line. Now it was time to think about the destination! I passed the finish line at 16:12:46 and got a finisher’s medal around my neck and a big smile on my face

16:12:46 finish line!

One life – live it, Hannu Rytkönen

Last spring one of our consultants came up with an idea that Houston Inc. should participate to Kilometrikisa-competition. So we formed a team called HoW (Houston on Wheels) and soon the six most eager consultants raised for the challenge.

Chain reaction campaign

Kilometrikisa is a playful cycling competition to motivate companies and other institutions to:

• use two wheels over four wheels
• burn calories instead of gas

“The employer promises to donate one euro to Finnish Red Cross for each 25km of cycling done.”

Our Employer was thrilled. Who wouldn’t want their employees to exercise and generally feel better! So to motivate us even more, Houston Inc. joined the Ketjureaktio-campaign (“chain reaction campaign”). It is an addition to Kilometrikisa and means that the employer promises to donate one euro to Finnish Red Cross for each 25km of cycling done.

And so the journey began.

From 10.5.2011 to 30.9.2011 we used bicycles as our main transportation mean as much as possible. But it was a bumpy journey. None of us were so-called cycle enthusiasts and we mainly owned regular city bicycles. During the challenge there were periods that we logged a lot of kilometers and periods that we logged almost none. But at the end we were content with the results.

“A nice result for first-timers but this leaves a lot to improve in the coming years!”

The total result of the whole Kilometrikisa was a staggering 17145300 kilometers of cycling! Out of that Houston on Wheels team did 2374 kilometers with 395,67 km per consultant on average. That also means that we saved 166 litres of gas, produced 415 kilograms less Co2 and earned 95 euros to give to Finnish Red Cross.

A nice result for first-timers but this leaves a lot to improve in the coming years! At least couple of points to consider how to get better results:

• motivate each other more!
• create a feeling of competition within the team by maybe offering a small price for the best
• publish the status of the team to the rest of the company during the competition
• get more people involved

Houston on Wheels team enjoyed this challenge and will definitely do better next year. Maybe you would like to challenge us? Or maybe you want to challenge us in what we do best – coding?

On behalf of the cycling team,

Esko Pylsy

A master at work.

I attended the Scandinavian Agile Conference 2011 and listened to Jason Gorman’s presentation on The Imperative Software Craftsmanship. Gorman’s talk, however brief, gave me the nudge needed to start structuring my views on how I see my occupation as a software developer.

“The only way to learn how to code is to actually go out and code.”

“The only way to learn how to code is to actually go out and code.” I’ve heard this statement many times from the so-called experienced programmers. In my experience this perception takes time to mature. Typically the more mature programmers also start to emphasize quality aspects of their work.

“Only after this ten year ‘internship’ can one start dreaming of someday mastering the art.”

Coding is in many respects comparable to the traditional crafts: the basic theory and techniques can be learned from books, but only through actual practicing can one eventually become a true master. Experience can’t be rushed. As an example in the craft of glassblowing there seems to be a consensus that it takes at least 10-years of practicing to reach a stage of maturity. Only after this ten year “internship” can one start dreaming of someday mastering the art. After almost 20 years of programming Gorman calls himself a journeyman programmer. He still gets inspired from the displays of excellence by masters such as Bob Martin and Ward Cunningham.

A software developer improves her programming skills in software projects. An agile software project has a goal, which a team is formed to accomplish. The goal is met through series of incremental prototype versions that are built iteratively to the best of the team’s know-how. The project owner sees the iteration outputs in demo sessions and uses the wisdom gained from them as the basis for steering the project.

“In modern organizations results are needed yesterday”

For projects that span over a year the team’s ability to react to change is of great importance for the overall result. In modern organizations results are needed yesterday, pressuring the team to work too fast for their abilities. Gorman spoke of anaerobic software development: “When teams write code at an unsustainable pace, code smells build up faster, making progress increasingly difficult and painful.” Without adequate skills or discipline, a speed too high will rapidly decrease the team’s productivity. This means that the cost of change will increase. Soon the benefits derived from the change won’t cover the cost of the change anymore.

“If you don’t understand your own code, how can you expect someone else to understand it?”

Gorman specified five cost-increasing factors in software development:

1. Poor readability of the code
2. Complexity of the code
3. Code duplication
4. Coupling of code and the resulting ripple effects
5. Inadequate regression testing of code

According to Gorman our ability to understand a piece of code affects crucially our ability to change it. Even code you have written yourself will be difficult to understand over time if its clarity and readability are neglected. If you don’t understand your own code, how can you expect someone else to understand it?

Complex algorithms and code structures increase the possibility of something going wrong. If something goes wrong, it needs to be fixed. That costs money. A large amount of duplicate code means that a fix has to be implemented in many parts of the system. The resulting code must be maintained. When a component is broken, a dependent component might also brake causing a butterfly effect. Without adequate regression tests the developer has no way of knowing things have gone awry. The cost of this will be unbearable for any organization.

It requires a right kind of learning environment to evolve as a programmer. Junior developer needs the hands-on-example of a senior developer. He also needs to be continuously confronted by demanding challenges that put her learning to the test. There has to be room for errors.

“An imitation eventually develops into a habit”

Furthermore, as Jason Gorman’s presentation outlined: the “pupil” has to want to learn. Gorman’s way of promoting high quality programming is based on continuous training. The team should agree on a set of practices that every team member commits to. The more experienced developers help the inexperienced ones and little by little the practice that started of as an imitation eventually develops into a habit. It is essential that even though experience levels might vary, every member of the group is considered equal. Trust is the cornerstone of building a learning-friendly and truly fertile development environment.

“So how can one differentiate an experienced programmer?”

So how can one differentiate an experienced programmer? In assessing the experience level of a developer Gorman advises people to follow the person in action: if you want to know how good a juggler is in juggling ask her to juggle for you. While assessing the skills of a junior software developer the more experienced one literally logs all the deviations from the agreed practices. The stumbling logged during the assessment is not to be held against the assesse but to be given as a foundation for improvement.

“Repetition is the key and there are no shortcuts”

Finally Jason Gorman reminded the listeners of an old saying about a tourist in New York asking renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz how to get to Carnegie Hall.  Practice, practice, practice was the answer. Even though the saying is meant as a joke I think it contains the essence in becoming a craftsman: repetition is the key and there are no shortcuts.

I believe I’m fortunate to work in an organization where it’s possible to evolve as a professional software craftsman.

How do you see your occupation as a software professional?

Vesa Teikari

Vesa Teikari