Arch Tea Time: 2020-08-13
Experiment for this hour: Strong Opinions Loosely Held Might be the Worst Idea in Tech
Hypothesis: Qualifying statements with uncertainty %, allows for more inclusive conversations.
Q: How much of this applies to edX meetings, from experience?
Note: some of us are training ourselves to be more assertive in order to succeed in this industry.
Note: sometimes there is an asymmetric demand of proof (may apply to newer or junior engineers)
Sometimes this also a matter of perception where people feel like they need a rock solid proposal before they can push an idea.
Note: Riff Analytics is a video conferencing tool that provides immediate feedback on the inclusivity of the meeting.
Other Ideas:
Bringing up alternatives
Prefacing statements with “I don’t feel strongly about this”, “There may be other ideas. Here’s one.”
Pausing for input
Not all pauses need to be awkward
Avoid forcing people to “stand and deliver”
reacting real time isn’t how all people operate or prefer to operate
Enable individual time before then opening up to group discussion
lets people contribute in their own way before being forced into larger group format discussion
Avoid asking people to specify if they “don’t know X or Y” in group setting, instead give high level summary
ex” Who here doesn’t know about Containerized Private Minions?”
Let's just stop asking "does everyone know what XYZ is?" and just give the explanation for acronyms and such up front.
+4 Rebranding edX.org and its i18n implications - carryover from last week
edX is gonna go through a re-branding effort, what kind of implications if any will this have for how we manage i18n.
Targeting January: new color, new type, new logo, etc
Would also require copy changes → translated strings would need to be re-translated
Note that for MFEs, we separate out the strings from the constants used in the code
This may allow us more flexibility to control when we change and deploy things. (60% certain)
Note: Add brand strings in well before we need to go live to give us time to translate.
+4 FYI: Paragon Proposed Changes
David Joy’s summary of the document:
Component changes to paragon are breaking changes in Paragon that apps need to understand / process before they upgrade.
With theme + brand being also incorporated into Paragon this update process becomes doubly harder.
The proposal is to move edX-brand out of paragon.
Some concerns - versioning and dependency, flexibility versus consistency.
Discussion / Notes on this:
80% confident in the proposal - David
70% confident this would help Open edX as well! - Nimisha
More feedback to come in Paragon working group / FEDX meetings!
+4 Arch Roadmap update
+2 Needed Architecture Investments wheels are in motion. Not planned right now:
Platform Frontend APIs, including API Practices
Codebase Organization
Documentation (a lot more to be done here)
What does a good django model set of unit tests look like? - asked by JJ, who will not be able to attend but will read the notes
Specific example that I’m working on (also applies to the question on validations below): https://github.com/edx/ecommerce/pull/3087/files#diff-6aa12e1c48e74f5bcc0bd29fabdf3185R126-R173
Background info: I’m attempting to test the
swap_states(cls)class method defined in the model. There are 3 possible rows in the table - “New”, “Current”, and “Discard”. There can only be one row in each state, so this method would be run (before deleting the existing “Discard” row & creating a “New” row) in order to move the existing row(s) along. I’m looking to set up a few different test scenarios, e.g. test case with 0 existing rows in the db, test case with 3 existing rows in the db, and I’d prefer to not do the setup inside the test itself (if the test fails, I want to know that the logic somewhere has changed, and not that my database state setup is broken, which is what would happen in that PR today)Additional background: This is really easy to do in RoR
What kinds of validations/validation patterns do we use on models (if any?) It seems like Django models will let you save invalid models, so what do we do to protect against bad data in the DB, if we’re not going through UI form fields to save models (e.g. we’re invoking methods to save stuff purely in the backend, like from a cronjob) and we can’t add validations in the DB itself? - also asked by JJ, who will not be able to attend this tea time but will read the notes
Example: You can save a model that doesn’t conform to the specified Enum (“choices”) values (https://github.com/edx/ecommerce/pull/3087/files#diff-ecfeeacce0f0764c9d65c761d8600f4eR143) from the command line, per Slack thread https://edx-internal.slack.com/archives/CD89W7Z7F/p1597248864457200?thread_ts=1597245996.449800&cid=CD89W7Z7F)
Additional background: This is really easy to do in RoR + you have to try pretty hard to save invalid models in RoR