coder . cl » rants

what do I dislike from IE?

Daniel Molina Wegener — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:46:42 +0000

I think that my major school on computing comes from Unix & Linux. Unix and derived operating systems are really cool, they have a lot of data processing tools for the command line and software development. They come at least with one language interpreter called Awk or better suited comes with Perl, so you can easily automate system tasks. So, Unix systems are really more developer friendly, rather than user friendly operating systems. With many tools that are freely available to extend the operating system and make it fit your data processing needs, without too much licensing problems.

An example of a good placed Unix system is Mac OS X, it has several command line tools to automate the operating system and make it friendly and its native development environment called X Code is very easy to acquire, without too much problems. It is a real programmer environment. Flexible enough to be customized, with various tools that allows you to program the environment, automate tasks and make life really more easier. For example while I’m programming and I want to seek source code with log lines, I use a single command line pipe to filter log messages, as follows.


$ find . -type f -name '*.py' -exec grep -nHi 'l.debug' {} \; | sed '/exc/d;'

On Windows and similar operating systems, which are specially made for users, rather than developers, I feel really truncated because I cannot do stuff like that. So, I become less productive under Windows and I hate it. Things that should be solved quickly with few command line and editor hooks — like Emacs provides me for editing automation — are delayed under Windows because it does not support that kind of stuff. What’s better than having an editor with an embedded Lisp interpreter? What’s better than having Perl and Awk among a lot of command line tools that allows me to automate any task that I want?

The same happens on its browser. Internet Explorer does not have enough tools for Web Development like others have. On Firefox and Google Chrome we have very nice development tools, allowing us to create amazing DHTML / AJAX based applications, among other stuff like building amazing HTML 5 and WebGL applications. I find really frustrating any work made under Internet Explorer. If you want to debug a simple JavaScript implementation — which is not really JavaScript under windows and it is dialect called JScript — you need to launch a whale called Visual Studio. So, to become productive developing Internet Explorer applications, you must pay for something that will be used with a 10% of its capacity, including the licensing cost of Visual Studio.

So, for me Windows, Internet Explorer, and related technologies are a mere gaming console, rather than a developer friendly environment. That is why I dislike using Windows and developing systems for that operating system, because it is poor, overfilled with useless ornaments rather than useful tools.

Copyright © 2012 Daniel Molina Wegener
Atribución-No Comercial-Sin Derivadas 2.0 Chile

the market is killing the programming advocacy

Daniel Molina Wegener — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:56:29 +0000

I see many programmers leaving their career as programmers to start a career as project managers. At certain age, they leave his work as programmers to start another stage on their career, but I think that most of them do not get bored of programming, I think that they just leave the programming career because the salary is not the same as project managers. So, along the time and reaching the higher point of a programmer salary, they decide to leave all programming activities. So, you have skilled programmers not doing good programming because their career seems to be truncated by the market driven salary.

How many times did you hear the words «I cannot pay you more because this is the market salary». Then you start looking other job positions, and you want to leave the programming career because it requires effort, you must think all day, and usually you must do overtime because you must solve requirements which are not managed properly — handled by mediocre project managers that allows the customer to request changes in the last hour — and are allowed to be handled as urgent requirements always because they want a cheaper development.

Usually those companies are requesting low profile programmers too. People that cannot handle complex programming problems. They are cheaper. So, you must not expect smart people working for those companies, and even you will not be able to say «show me the code», because they do not have a real interest on programming. Usually those companies are a trampoline to reach a higher positions as project manager, software architect and department manager, so there is no real interest on doing software. There is a big difference between someone that enjoys programming and someone that does not program, and usually those programmers that are seeking a higher position are falling in the same game, and allowing those «last minute super requirement that will change the world» to be implemented.

And you slowly are getting bored of programming because your environment, or maybe your company is not as good as it is described in newspapers, and it seems that you feel as slave. But it is natural, because your company is selling cheaper development and is not capable to sell good development, so the economics of your company is not driven by good managers. Optimization is not the approach of your company, they are using maximizations, delivering projects in less time that it is really required, making your work a daily torture programming overtime and meeting milestones with less time that a software piece really needs. So, there are two options, your project manager is a really bad project manager because he cannot manage requirements, or your company is a bad company because they cannot manage requirements.

If every project is urgent and should be solved as soon as possible, the fact that your milestones and schedule have the wrong estimation is real as the fact that your project managers are only thinking on the bank check at the end of the month.

Copyright © 2011 Daniel Molina Wegener
Atribución-No Comercial-Sin Derivadas 2.0 Chile

the ugly side of project management

Daniel Molina Wegener — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:13:32 +0000

The fact that many project managers and account managers are not able to handle milestones because many of them are not able to negotiate their schedules is real as the fact that without C — the language that Dennis Ritchie invented — we cannot have almost anything about the computer technologies that we know today. You as developer must assume that you should be leaded by people that is able to manage the schedule without falling in the need to use overtime and similar stuff, among including more developers into the project and requiring more resources.

You should know that including new developers in any project requires developers with a very quick learning curve, skilled reading documentation and reading the specifications provided by the team leader. Someone skilled managing projects is able to negotiate the schedule to finish the project with well planned milestones and deliverables. He should be able to stop any requirement change, or should be able to move the delivery date on any strong requirement change and negotiate a new price for the project because the final product requirement are changing.

In some manner, that is why I am currently charging worked hours instead of charging fixed price on any project that I handle. Usually project managers are not able to manage requirements, falling in overtime requests, with a strong lack of negotiation skills. So, for those projects with fixed price I say «sorry, but I cannot work for free». Mainly when software is subject to many changes, rather than physical products, where you cannot change the design many times as you want if you are not able to pay sequential builds of the product. So, on any requirement change, if the project price remains intact, I can clearly see that the project manager is not good enough and skilled enough to generate earnings for the company, with subsequent implication that I will not receive more retribution for doing an extra effort on building that project. So, «no compensation, no more work».

Receiving a compensation on any additional work, should be a must for any project manager. Otherwise they can start searching for another job, or you must simply leave the company — as I have done on my last work as employee — because you must not work underpaid, and you must not work doing extra effort if that effort is not compensated. So, «lift up the hearts, drag down the pants» do not works with me. I cannot work with project managers that keep saying «the customer has the true, even if they are not technically skilled».

a short illustrating story

I was working for a very big — I really mean very big — social organization, an international organization. Everything was going fine I think, deliverables were really delivered at time, and I was doing telecommuting. The project was based on PHP. Along the time, I have clearly detected that most people working on that Big Social Organization was not skilled as I was expecting from an organization like that.

For me, as a good developer, I have no problems to use version control systems, including continuous integration systems, because they allow me and my project managers to measure the real effort of coding. But that big organization kept using tarballs to send project updates. That big organization was not able to configure the server properly using written instructions — was that big organization capable to read technical documentation? — seems that they did not read the documentation. Me as freelancer, who can work with C, C++, Lisp, Haskell, Python, Perl, PHP5, C Sharp, Java and Visual Basic .NET, cannot have any excuses to do self-taught learning among reading documentation and reading Math books and similar stuff.

A was in front of people without good technical knowledge, so they were not capable to measure effort related to software development. The system was made from the beginning using object oriented programming, based on a LAMP stack and Zend Framework. From one day to another, we received the requirement to build everything from zero, using a procedural approach, without objects and classes, and everything should be finished in one month. So, migrating an entire platform from OOP approach to procedural and structured programming approach was not measured correctly. As result of my denial to rebuild the application, the payment was cancelled, a very «carrot and stick» approach on work.

Because payments were made using the famous «salary based on the market» for PHP5 development I was not receiving a good compensation as Java, C, C++ and Python developer, so I was considering the job only as a social benefit. That was great, but making less attractive the job position just because that big organization was having a big name and was able to cancel the payment because the project manager has changed his mind about how the project should be made was very bad decision I think. So, «no compensation, no more work», no matter how big is your company. Among the inherent problems that carry the lack of using version control systems, continuous integration systems and the proper coding style normative, without the proper knowledge of the best programming practices.

Copyright © 2011 Daniel Molina Wegener
Atribución-No Comercial-Sin Derivadas 2.0 Chile

programming traps and pitfalls

Daniel Molina Wegener — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:56:04 +0000

Programming is a hard activity, it requires concentration, and certain programming paradigms, like functional programming and well done object oriented programming, requires a good knowledge and basis in other areas, like theoretical computing. You cannot do well structured object oriented programming or functional programming without a good basis on algorithms. There is no such technology that allows you to create great programs without that knowledge, and you cannot be good creating software design without that knowledge.

Certainly, one of the worst enemies of programmers is getting stuck on a programming problem. But there are other well known enemies, like bad specifications and badly taken requirements, all of them can make a programmer to work twice, mainly once the programmer thinks that the problem is solved. Any of those errors are very de-motivational on any circumstances.

Personally, to boost my productivity as programmer, I do a previous analysis before I start my programming tasks for my workday. You can distinguish two types of tasks, those where you know exactly how to solve some problem, and those tasks where you don’t know how to solve the problem. There are also two subgroups, those tasks that are easy to complete once you know how to solve them, and those tasks that are not easy to complete, even if you know the solution or not.

Problem Levels

To get things done, I use a very simple schedule. I treat all problems that are on the group B (known-hard) first, then I solve all problems that are on the group C (unkonwn-easy), both tasks in the morning. Then I solve all problems on the group B (known-easy) after the lunch, and finally I do not solve those problems on the group D (unknown-hard), instead I do the required research to complete those tasks the next day, very early with a fresh mind, so they become group B (known-hard) or A (known-easy) problems.

Problem Schedule

So, all unknown-hard problems, will become known-hard the next day. Leaving the last hours of the workday to do research and doing theoretical solutions instead of coding, will bring you a more relaxed day ending, allowing you to progressively leave the coding activity. I think that is bad to be the complete day programming, you must do other activities, like reading. Organising problems according to its complexity brings me more productivity than doing problems sequentially.

If you are able to organize your schedule with the proper sequence, probably you will reach your better performance, because you will be using the proper energy to solve those problems, rather than doing tasks in sequential order, you will assign the priority according to its difficulty and the hour of the day to meet the best concentration regarding the problem to solve.

goodbye Dennis Ritchie

Daniel Molina Wegener — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:00:27 +0000

Seems that many people was concerned about Steve Jobs, he was a CEO, one of the most important contributors to make home computing something feasible, and closer to many people. But nothing about those successful products is possible without the contributions made by Dennis Ritchie. If you have a good knowledge on computing history, Dennis Ritchie was the creator — with Brian Kernigan and Ken Thompson — of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system. Also creator of the Plan 9 operating system — with Rob Pike.

Such size of contribution is clearly visible on most operating systems today. With Unix he started the time sharing era, where all desktop operating systems and most servers that are running today can run multiple tasks with the sensation of plain and transparent execution. Also, most operating systems are written on its core base in the C programming language, which is a common language for system programming, a well known friend on system programming tasks.

Mac OS X was born on the basis of a Berkeley Software Distribution operating system. Its kernel is a combination of the XNU/BSD and FreeBSD, where the XNU micro-kernel was adopted using the FreeBSD kernel services, and that kernel was called Darwin. The base system — most command line utilities — of the Mac OS X, iOS and related operating systems, are made on top of the FreeBSD operating system. And FreeBSD was born from 4.4BSD, and the father of the 4.4BSD operating system was UNIX. So, it is not strange to find utilities with a long history.

Also, the basis of the NeXT operating system is a BSD variant. What was adopted by the current Mac OS X from NeXT?, just the UI API calls. The complete UI API calls and classes defined in the Objective-C programming language — an object-based variant of the C programming language, and hybrid between C and Smalltalk — are made on top of the OpenStep standard, which is a variant and direct descendant of the NeXT Step UI API.

So, many ideas are not new. I think that the great inventor was Dennis Ritchie, and Steve Jobs was good orchestrating technologies, using the right technology on the right place.

What I want to rescue from this, is the fact that if you want a successful company, you must work as team. A good inventor cannot work alone if he does not know where to place a technology of his invention. A good CEO or manager cannot work alone if he does not know how to build a technology. So, both and working as team are required to successful build a good technology. If you are planning a company, associate with a good co-founder CTO.

Also, I was watching on the TV an interview related to Steve Jobs to a well known twitter user here in Chile [@stark], and I was really disappointed with how wrong was the information provided by that guy.