Communications of the ACM

can all be in one main() function. I recommend that you find a few such programs—well written, well commented, and that do one thing and do it well. Then make your Padawan read them and explain them to you.

KV has extolled the virtues of reading good code as a way of learning to write good code, and for young readers, short programs are best. Even though you are working on greenfield code—a rarity in our industry—there must be some scripts or code lying about that you do not hate and that extol the virtues you wish to instill in this apprentice. The most important part of any of these programs is that they do one thing, they do it clearly, and it is obvious to even the most inexperienced programmer what is going on. Find that code, explain its beauty, and then make them extend and maintain it.

Since you both are working on the same code base, you also have ample opportunity for leadership by showing this person how you code. You must do this carefully or the junior programmer will think you are pulling rank, but, with a bit of gentle show and tell, you can get your Padawan to see what you are driving at. This human interaction is often difficult for those of us who prefer to spend our days with seemingly logical machines. Mentorship is the ultimate test of leadership and compassion, and I really hope you do not wind up sliced in half on the deck of a planet-smashing space station.

KV

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George V. Neville-Neil ( kv@acm.org) is the proprietor of Neville-Neil Consulting and co-chair of the ACM Queue editorial board. He works on networking and operating systems code for fun and profit, teaches courses on various programming-related subjects, and encourages your comments, quips, and code snips pertaining to his

Communications column.

Copyright held by author.

this often enough, clearly, because I say it a lot. Someday I will lose my voice, and the people I am screaming at will finally think they will get some peace; but if that ever happens, I have a recorded version I can play through a megaphone.

Communication is just a fancy word for storytelling, something that humans have probably been doing since before we acquired language. Unless you are an accomplished surrealist, you tell a story by starting at the beginning, then over the course of time expose the reader to more of the details, finally arriving at the end where, hopefully, the reader experiences a satisfying bit of closure. The goal of the writer (or coder) is to form in the mind of the reader the same image the writer had. That is the process of communication, and it does not matter if it is prose, program, or poetry—at the end of the day, if the recipient of our message has no clue what we meant, then all was for naught.

Of course, as many brilliant writers have proven over time, clear narrative is not entirely necessary, but let’s just stick with the clear narrative metaphor for code, rather than claiming we should write an accounting system based on Naked Lunch. I mean, I would enjoy it, but would it work? Only the Mugwumps would know.

The concept of simple narrative can be applied to code in the following way. We are trying to write down the steps that are required to do a particular job with a machine in such a way that when other readers come upon the narrative (code)—which is usually thrust upon them with a bug list as long as a baby’s arm—they are able to pick up the story wherever they choose. For a short program, something less than 100 lines, the narrative

The concept
of simple narrative
can be applied
to code.

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