{codesqueeze} » Thought Stuff

The Correct Process Guides Us (Tracer Architecture Cont.)

Max Pool — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:54:10 +0000

Here is my big thought for the day:

The correct process implicitly guides people into correct behavior. The correct architecture forces code into the correct patterns.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Tracer Bullet Architects show true leadership by creating clear and direct paths prior to the entire team coming aboard is probably the most important activity of a successful project.

However, I would like to take this one step further and suggest that if [as a team leader] you install the most correct process people will want to participate in correct and efficient behavior.

For example, when Napster was first introduced millions of people illegally downloaded music. Why? Not because they were bad people, but because they had no other mechanism for which to purchase (and own) digital copies of their favorite songs. Apple came along with iTunes giving people the first reasonably priced and easy to purchase model which included digital ownership – and the rest is history. People want to do the right thing and will given the correct means.

Building on this concept, it is possible to create project infrastructures that force developers to adhere to good practices such as SOLID. Seriously…I have done it. Some of these architectures would range from MVC/DI/IoC/Mock goodness to Tiered/Stubs/Statics/MockingIsEvil grossness, and each was a good fit given current company. It was the architectures that enforced clean lines of responsibility, increased testability, and [as a result] increased stability.

Of course people can break processes, of course they can break code, but if the correct solution is in place – they have to try really hard to do the wrong thing. If people continually are breaking process or code, then the answer is easy – you currently have the wrong solution in place.

Creating a zero friction environment is rarely rewarded by your peers; however, it is the most rewarding personal achievement one can accomplish.

If you do something correct, it is as if you did nothing at all. -God (as seen on Futurama)

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Nobody Has A Duty To Teach

Max Pool — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:19:20 +0000

At the last conference I attended, Scott Hanselman hosted a session called – Why So Mean? (entire Kyte video here). Like many discussions before it, this session was focused on the question most alpha geeks crave to answer, “It is our duty to teach and pull the rest of the community forward! How do we get other developers to listen, learn, and most important care?”

Sigh…

First and foremost, let’s address the question, “How do we get others to learn?” I find this question so egotistical and self serving it pains me. A guru that sits atop of the mountain does not climb off of it to go door-to-door knocking looking for students. Why would he? Climbing the mountain is the first sign that the student is willing to put forth the effort to learn.

Additionally, what about allowing survival of the fittest to run its’ course? If some developers walk around with their eyes and ears closed it will not be long before people, companies, and universities will have to “ratchet-up” in order to survive against better and faster competitors.

As for “it’s our duty” portion I say – bullocks! If you sincerely feel a sense of duty, then super cool. Be a blogger, be a author, be a mentor; however, it is not your duty. In order to say “yes” to something you have to say “no” to something else. If you choose to teach your mantra just know that you are taking away your time and attention to something else whether it be your family, work, or even the practices that allowed you to be good enough to teach your wisdom. You can be a hermit guru if you wish and the world will keep spinning.

I recently bumped into this story and found it quite appropriate:

In ancient Greece there once lived a wise philosopher, he was greatly admired by his peers and extremely smart for his time, indeed he was considered a genius. There was a young man who looked up to this philosopher with great admiration, he wanted to know everything he knew, and become great like he was.

The young man approached the philosopher one day seeking to become an understudy. The philosopher informed the young man that he would not teach him – he was not a teacher but a philosopher. The young man persisted, he asked the philosopher every morning for a lesson, anything would do. This went on for several months. Finally, one day the philosopher agreed and informed the young man that his first lesson would be taught at the beach the following morning, he was to meet him there at dawn sharp.

The young man didn’t sleep much that night, he was anticipating the great lesson he would learn about the ocean, or maybe the sand, or maybe some deep insight to the mating ritual of crabs; it didn’t matter, he was finely going to learn something. He showed up at the beach at dawn sharp as agreed, but the philosopher was no where to be seen. He scanned the beach up and down several times, he gazed as far as he could down the road to town hoping his teacher was simply late, nothing.

A little discouraged he sat down and gazed out into the ocean, and then he saw him, or his head rather, about seven paces out into the water, submerged all the way up to his chin. The young man was surprised but excited, he leaped up and ran out to his new teacher as fast as he could. When he got within arms length of the philosopher, the philosopher grabbed him by the arm and twisted him under the water, the young man struggled, but the philosopher was fast and agile, he had a firm grip. The young man was unprepared to be forced under water so quickly, he only had half a lung full of air. 10 seconds passed, then 20 then 30, but he could not free himself from the old man.

Panic started to set in, he realized that he was about to die, his vision started to tunnel, he desperately needed some air. Just before he was about to give up and take in a lung full of sea water the philosopher let him free. The young man, quite frightened, swam as fast as he could to shore. He yelled out to the philosopher and asked, “What was that for, are you crazy?” to which the old man replied “That was your lesson. When you want knowledge as much as you just wanted air, you’ll find it” – Found on SerenityCheck

Bloggers, authors, forum contributors, speakers, and team leaders – I salute you. You continually open the door of wisdom to many, but it is the student’s choice alone whether or not to walk through.

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You Never Should’ve Done It…

Max Pool — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:10:47 +0000

Ran into this quote I had scribbled on a chunk of paper:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. – Peter Drucker

Personally, I don’t see to many instances of premature optimization any more; however, I do see premature abstraction all the time. Let the situation pull you to a solution, don’t push your solution on the situation.

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The Wisdom Of A Half Empty Glass

Max Pool — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:58:21 +0000

I am not a wise man. At times, I even lack basic intelligence. However as of late, I have become aware one basic principle I practice has always lead me to great success – the wisdom of pessimistic thinking.

Some view pessimists as concentrating on the negatives of life. I view pessimism as the ability for positive improvement.

Pessimism reminds us that because the glass is half empty, in turn, it removes our ego. Lack of ego instills humility. Humility leads to humbleness. Humbleness gives us the mental and spiritual freedom to explore improvement.

With the help of pessimism, becoming a more successful developer, person, and life long learner is much easier.

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The Real Reason You Didn’t Learn Jack Sh*t In College

Max Pool — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:45:43 +0000

I have been going through a lot of self reflection as of late, and as you can imagine there are a number of things that haunt my current psyche.

One of these such things is coming to the realization of just how special I thought I was as a college graduate. After all, I had shed the skin of the cocky teenager and had a true grasp of who I was and what I was capable of. I had degrees. I worked at Microsoft. Martin Fowler look out – there’s a new guy in town…

Although I can say (with little ego) that I did have a lot going for me, and I had accomplished a lot - I knew little to nothing about the real world.

You see, college never allowed me to learn through failure. As Alan Watts below puts it, I was placed in this “nursery society” where I was allowed to believe that real life was about pretending, having fun, and no matter what things will be alright.

Translating that into software development, I never had to write programs that lasted more than the next weekly project. As a result, my solutions were short sited, problematic, and all-round crap. But I didn’t need to care, as long as the teacher did not find that one little bug I swept under the rug or care about code maintainability or the fact that there were no tests – after all, it’s always a sunny day in Disneyland.

In a sense, college wired my habits to approach solutions wrong. I went to college to grow into an adult, and came out an over confident child.

Recent graduates and veteran developers alike take heed – we all have a lot to learn about our profession and even more about ourselves. Never allow your confidence to block your ability to learn from the mistakes of yourself and others. After all, we all graduated from the University of Mickey.

For the true significance of Disneyland is that it reflects our notions of children – what they are, what is good for them, and what will please them. Children are a special class of human beings which came into existence with the industrial revolution, at which time we began to invent a closed world for them, a nursery society, wherein their participation in adult life could be delayed increasingly – to keep them off the labor market. Children are, in fact, small adults who want to take part in the adult world as quickly as possible, and to learn by doing. But in the closed nursery society they are supposed to learn by pretending, for which insult to their feelings and intelligence they are propitiated with toys and hypnotized with baby talk. They are thus beguiled into the fantasy of that happy, carefree childhood with its long sunny days through which one may go on “playing” – in the peculiar sense of not working – for always and always. – Alan Watts, Does It Matter?: Essays on Man’s Relation to Materiality

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Squeezed Links: January 2009

Max Pool — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:57:18 +0000

The first month of this year has been a good one for me. Nice, long vacation followed by a good month here on codesqueeze. I already have a few posts in the pipeline including more videos, so stay tuned for those coming in February!

Here are the top posts I read this month:

Developer Productivity – 5 Ways To Kill It – Listen up managers…wait?…only 5?
Software Design Kuleana – Weird title, but a home run of a post by Rob about the relationships we have with clients.
10 Lessons in Scalability from MySpace – An oldie, but a goody by Russell
Leadership 101: Want Respect? Give Respect. – Title says it all, Jim hit a little close to home for me that day.
Rules of Database App Aging – Every application mutates over time, but reflecting on this list makes me laugh (and die) a little inside.

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The Wisdom Of Insecurity

Max Pool — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:00:55 +0000

In theory, with experience comes wisdom, but what are the results of that wisdom?

Better technical decisions? Sure.
Better communication skills? Why not.
More confidence? Never.

One of the greatest gifts my experiences have given me is the gift – insecurity. I have learned not to assume a refactor will be easy. I have learned not to optimistically estimate. I have learned NOT to allow the first possible solution be the only explored solution to a problem.

One of my favorite authors, Alan Watts, wrote a book called The Wisdom of Insecurity which talked about why it is good to question organized religion. It is not my point to argue religion in these thoughts; rather give accreditation to the practice of insecurity.

Developer pitfalls such as underestimation, short sightedness, and buggy software can all be avoided with the practice of insecurity, and avoiding pitfalls is the first sign of a wiser developer.

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Is Product Splintering The Future Of Software?

Max Pool — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:22:00 +0000

Recently, I read an interesting thought about how the future of all software is bloatware. While I do agree with this, I feel the extreme holds true as well that in the future (or even now) we will be saturated with smaller niche products otherwise known as – Product Splintering.

Product Splintering is a marketing term to describe when a company purposefully splits or “splinters” a product into multiple products. You need not look any farther than your toothpaste isle to see an example of this in action. A Mega-Does-Everything Toothpaste does not exist; instead we have whiteners, fresheners, kid friendly, and clean mint. They have essentially made one core product and spun 10-20 unique niche products from it.

Why would a company do this instead of creating one really great product? There are a number of reasons…

Niche “Me” Fullfillment

First and foremost with product splintering is the marketers ability to prey on the consumers want to feel “special”. This is exactly why modern coffee shops tolerate people ordering triple-shot-grande-non-fat-dry-cappuccino (yep, that’s my order).

When you go niche, people feel they are getting a specialized just-for-them product. The connection between the consumers current problem and a prominent solution increases the ability for a sale.

For example, although Toothpaste X may whiten teeth better than Super Whitening Toothpaste Y, Toothpaste Y has the higher ability to sell to consumers looking for that specific attribute. The consumer will implicitly connect more with the product willing to solve their current problem (i.e. yellow teeth). Rinse and repeat with numerous dental problems, and you have an army of products willing to solve any specific problem.

Software in the future may also become smaller and more specialized solving only the one or two biggest problems.

Market Saturation

Is it better to have one product on the shelf or ten? You guessed it, having more products on the shelf all branded in the same fashion takes up more physical real estate on the shelf. In turn, it takes up more of your attention and raises the probability for you to buy their product.

This actually happens on the internet all the time. Think about it – is it better to own one video game store or twenty video game stores? Bigger footprint in the search engines, bigger footprint in PPC, and a higher probability for resales even if the consumer changes stores.

The New Factor

People love “new” stuff, and this is why small business will always have a chance. Is toothpaste new? Nope. Cars, nope. Underwear, nope. Yet there are plenty of “new” products coming out in those niches, some of which on nothing more than rebranded original products.

When we splinter products and apply different names to them, it gives us a better opportunity to remarket the old as “new”

So where does all this hip, new marketing information take us? Well, it does point exactly to the model that some Micro ISV’s are taking to publish their software solutions. 37 Signals probably being at the forefront of this niche, single solution products – but there are many many others. How about all those XHTML splicing services such as PSD Gator? One problem, one service option.

Is bloatware still a problem in future software? Of course, without question. Is product splintering an equal player in this ever growing web world. Yes…yep…you know it…you betcha…it’s a go…you get the point…. ;)

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How You Can Code Global Poverty Away

Max Pool — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:35:31 +0000

This post is in response to Blog Action Day. This year’s topic is one that is important to everyone – poverty.

Back in the first years of my computer infancy, one website struck a core nerve with me – The Hunger Site. It was the first time I saw a website completely dedicated to the greater good of humanity. It is rare that we as software developers get the chance to utilize our talents for the sole purpose of making the world a better place, but there is always opportunities if we keep our eyes open.

While passing through Sioux Falls, SD this weekend on a family vacation, the family and I decided to take a road break at a local mall. While bopping around we discovered a store unlike any other called Catharsis. Catharsis is a small, local art studio with some of the best local talent I think I have ever seen.

Since I am a chatty guy, I started chatting with one of the owners and he began to tell me a story that the entire store actually operates like a non-profit organization and that all proceeds go to local charities such as animal shelters, half-way houses, and the local Luther League. I was absolutely humbled by these guys and their generosity (as must have the mall, because they practically donated the space even through the xmas season).

Long story short, they said they were new to the internet and needed a website – I decided this was one of those opportunities to help. I donated a small amount of money, time, and personal resources and help them to create Experience Catharsis. It is literally only hours old and still slightly under construction, but it is a start of something I feel could be larger than local to Sioux Falls.

Many small hands move mountains, but small hands with the power of the internet can change the world. I hope you search and find at least one opportunity in your career to donate your time and skills as the rewards you inadvertently may find might be greater than anything you could ever imagine.

- Max

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Abstraction Is For Both Humans And Software, But Not Software

Max Pool — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:43:28 +0000

It is funny how software engineers always tend to simplify problems with one additional level of abstraction; that is, the answer always lays in the next tier of thinking.

The original Von Neumann computer did not have CPU registers, and when Von Neumann was asked he responded “Any competent mathematician will be able to keep track of them in their head”, and as you can imagine CPU registers became the first level of computer abstraction. Then came the primitive data types, the first procedural languages, and then the grand daddy of them all OOP.

With concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism, there is no question why today’s software developers think and solve problems at such a high level. Don’t get me wrong – this is a great thing as it allows us to concentrate and be more efficient on solving real world problems. However, this has also become a very bad thing as the majority of us no longer understand how the basic computer works.

Humans (on a daily basis) do not look at a piece of fruit and say to themselves, “Oh my, that mass of molecules sure looks tasty”, of course not. This is because in order to function in our space we do not truly need to understand that level of detail.

However, in software we both do and do not need to understand the lower levels of abstraction for the software to work, and this is where we as modern software developers are getting soft.

I have met many young (and talented) developers that have never programmed in BASIC. Never even developed in C or C++. Have absolutely no clue what a semaphore lock is. With first languages now being Java or C# the days of algorithm analysis are withering away.

I guess what I am trying to say is, you can be the best orange farmer on the planet without knowing anything about molecular structures, but you can’t be the best software developer without knowing how your CPU works…

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