2.5 Pay off some technical debt

[eda-waffler]

2.5 Pay off some technical debt

This assignment combines:

• HTML and CSS best practices
• GitHub branching, merging and pull requests

Let's pretend that CSS Zen Garden want to add some more features to their homepage. Let's also pretend that the junior developer Sam who wrote the HTML for their page didn't have the habit of being tidy. Before Zen Garden can add any features, they need to clean up their HTML indentation so they can see where and how to add new elements, and make sure they don't make the mess worse.

1. Pay off Sam's technical debt

• [x] Start your Toggl timer.
• [x] In Github, create a new repo called sprint-2.
• [x] Clone the repo down to the EDAworkspaces directory in your VM.
• [x] Checkout a new branch called tidying - this time, you'll not be pushing to the master branch. The HTML you'll be cleaning is messy, but it works. Zen Garden want to review your work to check you've not broken anything before they merge into the master branch.
• [x] In your sprint-2 repo, add a file called pristine-zen-garden.html.
• [x] Copy the messy zen-garden html into pristine-zen-garden.html.
• [x] Tidy all the indentation. There are some parts of the HTML that you'll likely not understand yet, that's ok. Your objective is just to sort out the indentation of the elements to reveal the structure of the HTML content.
• [x] Push your tidying branch to GitHub.
• [x] In Github, create a 'pull request' from your tidying branch to the master branch, with a description of the tidying you've done. Don't accept your own pull request!
• [x] Add everyone in your cohort as collaborators to your sprint-2 repo:
  • Go to your sprint-2 repo in GitHub
  • Click the settings tab up the top
  • In the left nav, click 'Collaborators'
  • Find all the GitHub usernames of your cohort from the students.json file in the root of your cohort repo - www.github.com/dev-academy-programme/yourcohort-year/
  • Add each GitHub user as a collaborator to your sprint-2 repo
  • Your cohort now has 'write access' to your sprint-2 repo
• [x] Post a link to your pull request in your cohort's Slack channel with the hashtag #debtpaid.

  2. Reflection

• [x] Get the time it took to get to complete section '1. Pay off Sam's technical debt' from your toggl timer. At $30/hr, how much did this little piece of technical debt cost Zen Garden? Post the $ cost in the comments section below. How much would this have cost if the code was built by a person with tidy habits?
• [x] Sam wasn't tidy with indentation, but miraculously Sam built beautifully structured 'semantic' HTML (normally poor structure flows from poor indentation - the resulting poor structure creates much more severe technical debt). Take 5 minutes to review Sam's HTML.

  3. Roleplay

Let's pretend that you're now the technical lead on the Zen Garden 'spring tidy' project. Your job is to review 'pull requests' - to check the code is up to standard and still functioning before it is accepted onto the master branch.

• [x] Find one other person's pull request in your cohort's Slack channel by searching for #debtpaid.
• [x] Read through their submitted HTML code.
• [x] If you see errors, make a comment on the pull request, asking them to resolve the issue you see and to mention you when they have pushed up a commit that resolves the issue you raised.
• [x] Wait for a GitHub notification from them, review the pull request, and accept it if the indentation is perfect.
• [x] Tidy their repo by deleting the tidying branch (they'll still have a copy locally if they need it).

[ursula-f]

$45, which could have been done with $10 or almost free

[ursula-f]

Sam's HTML was quite difficult to navigate, but his site is set out very well. It would be nice if his paragraphs had more formatting so it wasn't one completely long line and easier to read. It's also quite boring and a bit sore on the eyes, but he's starting off in the right direction.