Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some of the worst mistakes I make are my mistakes about my mistakes and the corrections of my mistakes. Confused? Most of us are.

We all make mistakes. Sorry to write that, but it is true. Then we make meta mistakes. These are mistakes about our mistakes and the corrections of our mistakes.

“Well,” I like to say after recognizing a big boo boo (slang for “stupid mistake”), “I was tired on that day and didn’t understand what someone told me and they didn’t explain it well and it was last month and nothing bad happened and you know, let bygones by bygones and water under the bridge and please, no one hold me accountable for my stupid mistake, please.”

Enough excuses. I was mistaken. Will I compound that mistake with a meta mistake? Will I correct the mistake? Will my correction be mistaken as well?

Of course we can dwell in the past too much. Of course we can fall into analysis paralysis. And of course, we can ignore what we did and what we did in reaction to what we did.

I recommend thinking. That is often painful, but usually beneficial. Excusing a mistake and moving along as if it never happened… Ooooops, that’s an excuse. See how easy it is? The mistake didn’t happen, I MADE A MISTAKE; I WAS MISTAKEN. I cannot move along as if I was not mistaken. I must admit MY MISTAKE, count the costs, and do tasks to recover from MY MISTAKE.

Otherwise, my meta mistake just makes everything worse.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are many endeavors in which it is important to do something before talking about doing it.

Have an idea for a book? Great. Don’t pitch the idea to publishers. They will expect you to come back with 90% of the book in hand. Then they will talk to you about you finishing the book.

Advance on the royalties? That is for celebrities. Everyone else must do the work before making the claim to genius. Write the entire book. Rewrite the entire book. Than tell publishers what you have.

This extends beyond books, plays, scripts, songs, etc. Have a great idea for the next great app? Build it; tell others about it, and do it in that order.

“But I’m an idea person,” say many. “I’ll state the idea, you do it, and we’ll share the reward.” Sorry, I’ve seen that movie, but that is only in the movies and is not how the world works.

This—do before claiming—is not always the case. There are instances when doing something, even the smallest first steps, require resources that are not at hand. If you are working in the at area, you will know it. More importantly, the folks with the resources will know it. With today’s technology, however, those cases are fewer and fewer than most want to admit.

by Dwayne Phillips

We seem to be far more tolerant of technical failures.

When I was a kid (we played baseball in the streets and things like that), I often heard the excuse, “The computer is down.”

That excuse brought all sorts of grievous vexation that excuses usually bring. It was recognized as an excuse for failure. We didn’t seem to tolerate excuses much in that day of street baseball. I guess skinned knees, torn clothing, and all made us less tolerant.

We tolerate more these days. ChatGPT is available for free use. Well, some days I see a message about the thing being too busy and I should come back later. I guess the computer is down or something.

And we all seem to accept that excuse. “Good enough” is one of the accepted excuses of our age. Hey, it’s free, so what do I expect?

I find it interesting that back in the 1980s various AI technologies were ready to be tried, but were held back. People wouldn’t accept something that was right 90% of the time (when human experts were right only 80% of the time). People would be outraged at those 10% incorrect answers.

Today? It’s sort of funny to see the silly mistakes the software makes. The computer is up, well, sort of, but limping along and making comical errors. That’s okay today.

by Dwayne Phillips

People in distant lands use the same words differently. Time and generations create distant lands.

I was fascinated by this story about younger folks putting things on TikTok et al. Then older folks who admit people to college and hire them for jobs noticed those things.

The younger folks spoke in the language of their land. The older folks noticed the words in the language of their faraway land. The meaning the older folks took cast the younger folks in a rather bad light. The older folks rejected the younger folks.

The younger folks shouldn’t have said what they said. The older folks shouldn’t have read what they read (hey, that rhymes). Someone should have translated the two different languages. Someone should have at least informed the younger and older folks that they were using different languages.

The older folks, by virtue of their advanced years and experience, should have known. The younger folks, well, uh, they sort of have an excuse.

We all live in different lands. We all use different meanings for the same words. I suppose we could all do a little better. Let’s at least give it a try.

by Dwayne Phillips

A review of percent may surprise some. Sorry about that. Use this information cautiously.

I recently read a contract that purported to calculate 50% of 50%. That struck me as odd, so given too much time on my hands, I thought about it a while.

Warning: thinking about basic things for a while can reveal information that makes people mad at you.

Going back to the word problems we used to do back when we scratched on the walls of caves with rocks… the word “of” translated to “multiply something.” For example, “a tenth of the cost” meant we multiplied 0.1 and the cost.

Let’s go back to 50% of 50%. That translates to multiplying 50% and 50%. The answer is 2,500 percent squared. No, wait a minute. Half of 50% is 25%. Everyone knows that. What is is this 2,500 stuff?

I go back to the basics (here is where people become mad at me). 50% is not a half. 50% is a half (0.5 for us decimal point folks) times 100%. That’s how we go from 0.5 to 50%.

This leads us to things like:

• 25% is not a quarter, it is a quarter times 100%.
• 10% is not a tenth, it is a tenth times 100%.
• 75% is not three quarters, it is three quarters times 100%.

But everyone knows that 50% is a half, 25% is a quarter, and so on. I told you this would make people mad at you. And everyone knows that 50% of 50% is 25% or a quarter. So, Mr. smarty pants (as my mother would tell me), stop all this.

This is often what happens when I think about basic things. It seems like folks today don’t like to consider basic things. I guess I was always in the 1% of the 1% in the strange-folks list. ooops, 1% of 1% is 1 percent squared which has no meaning which…

by Dwayne Phillips

The persons who are in this place at this time to decide this thing are usually in the wrong place and time and deciding the wrong thing.

Let’s decide. We are the deciders. We are in the deciding position because at some time and place in the past we showed how well we decide.

The trouble is, that time is past. Does being so smart in another time and place make us smart in this time and place? Probably not, but what else are we to do?

It seems like this should all be easier, but it isn’t. One way around this is to make the decisions smaller so that when we are wrong, we won’t be big wrong, just small wrong.

by Dwayne Phillips

Events occur in a set order, unless they don’t. Thought is encouraged.

The title is from a nursery rhyme (origin unknown by me). The third event is a baby in a baby carriage.

Events occur in a set order. Breakfast-lunch-dinner. Entree then desert. Eat breakfast, then brush your teeth (or is that one backwards?).

The troublesome reality is that events usually don’t come the the order prescribed by some folks. In building systems, we have:

1. Requirements
2. Design
3. Build
4. Test
5. Deploy

Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, actually, we can do things in this order and have a nice solution. Then again, we can have a better solution if… Now comes the thinking. Let’s do steps 1. through 5., pause, think, and do steps 1. through 5., several more times.

Of course we do step 1., start step 2., go back to 1., try a little of step 3., go back to 2., and so on. Work a little, learn a little, work a little, learn a little, or is the “learn a little” just a natural part of working?

In my experience, I find that things go better in one way or another if I plan for learning. Of course, I don’t want to learn too much or I will never reach some end. Then again, is learning the end?

The more I think about this, the more I want to stop and take a nap. There we go:

1. Think
2. Nap
3. Work
4. Think
5. Eat
6. Nap
7. Work

Did I get that order right? Let me think about that one.

by Dwayne Phillips

Today’s practice of delivering software and systems emphasizes continuous delivery. Today’s practice, however, fails at this. Technology is not the problem.

CI/CD is continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment). Work everyday. As each little increment of capability is finished, deliver it. Perhaps we deliver every day and perhaps several times every day.

Such is what we claim. In practice, we … well we sort of act contrary to what we claim.

Why do we act like hypocrites? Fear. We want to appear perfect and complete and whole. A trouble with delivering a little bit at a time is that the little bits are just that—little bits. They are not whole. They are not as good as we can imagine. If we had a little more time, i.e., a few weeks or months, we can deliver a complete system that knocks your socks off.

When you see my little increment each day, you won’t like it. And then you won’t like me and that is what I fear the most—rejection.

Now we come to candor. Let’s tell folks what they are receiving and how they are receiving it—one little bit at a time. Let’s ask folks what they think so far, and let’s be ready to listen to what they say.

Lots of folks will ask, “Is this it? Where’s the rest of it?”

Back to candor. We only promised a little at a time. In addition—and this addition is important—we promised to let them comment and we promised to listen.

People will ask, “When ya’ gonna’ do this or that?”

Well, we never thought of “this or that.” We had other plans. We learned that folks want “this or that” not what we planned. We have to change our plan. Rats. We hate not being in control. That’s another reason why we act contrary to what we claim. Our pride keeps us on our path, not on what folks actually want.

We entered this system-building field to focus on technology and not all those touchy feely things like fear, rejection, pride, and listening to ideas, hopes, and wishes of “them.”

by Dwayne Phillips

Most job interviews center on one question, “What do you know?” Here’s a suggestion for a new central question, “Can you learn?”

I don’t like job interviews. The folks interviewing me are usually quite pleasant. They want to know what I know. The central question is, “What do you know?”

That question is asked in many different ways including:

• Can you color in the lines?
• How many colors have you used in a coloring book?
• Describe a situation in which you led a team of folks trying to color a coloring book.

In order to answer all the questions in a good manner, you have to already work at the place. That place is unique as all places of employment are unique. They use a specific set of tools in a specific manner to do a specific thing. If you are specific to the third power, that indicates that you already work in that place.

Since all work places are unique, new employees have to learn the specific, specificity, specificness of that place. Huh? Oh, new employees have to learn. Every single new employee has to learn.

Hence, my suggestion for a central question, “Can you learn?”

The job interview now is about learning if the applicant can learn. This requires new questions. Describe an invented workplace; describe invented things, and determine if the applicant learned all this.

This is different. Hence, it is difficult (at first). Try it.

by Dwayne Phillips

In the past month or two, many have bemoaned the appearance of software that can write essays for students. I have yet to read concerns about software that teachers can use to write essay assignments.

ChatGPT is ruining the world. Well, at least some folks think it is ruining their world. The software writes essays. Students won’t write their essays any more. How will teachers know if the students are “doing their own work?”

First, ChatGPT doesn’t write essays. Give it a prompt like, “Write an essay about the drafting of the Declaration of Independence,” and the software will access the the world’s memory banks (we used to say things like “memory bank”) and mimic what is found. Not too exciting when you think of it.

Second, I have read many essays and posts by teachers at many levels of education bemoaning this software. What is a teacher to do? How will the teacher know if the student “did their own work?” Well, if a teacher cannot tell… Never mind that.

Finally, what I have not read is a single post or essay about how the teachers will use such software. Will the teacher be creating their own assignment or using ChatGPT. “Write a one-sentence assignment for college freshmen writers in English 102.” Ooooh, aaaaaah. Wait. Is that okay? Wait.

Why aren’t any of the teachers questioning their fellow teachers?

Perhaps we could ask that last question of ChatGPT. Well, maybe we don’t want to hear any answers.