Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

We disdain the review of fundamentals. We disdain fundamentals. We disdain review. I forget why.

Why do we hate it when someone says, “Let’s go back to fundamentals.”

Like, “Let’s review some basics of grammar and punctuation.”

Why do we struggle to say, “Let’s review…anything.”

I forget why.

Oh, wait. That’s it. I need to review because I forget. I wish I remembered everything I knew. I guess I do remember everything I knew as it is still in my brain, but sometimes I can’t seem to access that thing, that fundamental, that whatever it is I think I know but I just can’t seem to…

I guess this is something about ego. I have to admit that I am not perfect. I have to admit that I can’t remember how to spell “their” or is it “thier” I guess that is a case of the “e” before the “i” as the other way around gives a red dotted line under the word. I digress, but I hope this example shows that I hate to admit that I just don’t remember some things that I should.

And it is really annoying when my colleagues don’t remember some things that THEY SHOULD! Alas, I have to remember my failings as well, and I hate to do that.

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the bigger compliments in the knowledge world in which we live is when someone wants to know what I know.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you! I am a grand exalted expert in expertise and all grand exalted things!” said a frustrated expert when told, “Explain yourself.”

I have been the grand exalted expert who was told to explain myself to those less-than-grand and un-exalted non-experts of the world. Hmmmf! The nerve of them to not accept my opinion.

Foolish me. They were complimenting me, and it was probably an undeserved compliment.

They wanted to know what I knew and what I was doing. I had created knowledge that they wanted.

Does anything get any better than that in this knowledge-worker world?

by Dwayne Phillips

The search to find a method to develop software tended to pass over the fact that smart people were doing a good job while those who struggled simply struggled.

Back in the early days, smart persons were writing software. They did it well, their software ran correctly.

Look at the first word, “smart.”

Time moves on. Hardware becomes less expensive, and we have more programmers. Instead of 100 programmers in the US, we have 10,000. Sorry to say, but the fact is the average IQ of the programmer fell.

How did the pioneers write software? They considered the problem and wrote software that worked.

Along come the next 9,900 programmers and the method used by the first 100 smart programmers didn’t work. Software, unless it was written by smart persons, didn’t work.

We needed a better way to do things. We needed a method.

Hey, engineers seemed to build things that worked. Let’s try engineering. So we have software engineering and software engineers. Engineers had requirements, rough designs, detailed designs, tests, building, test, integration, tests, verification and validation. 

Let’s do all that. 

In today’s terms, software engineering was the early democratization of developing software.

Instead of 100 brilliant mathematicians, physicists, and playwrights writing software that worked, we had 10,000 people from varied backgrounds developing software that usually didn’t work, but when they applied enough engineering, they got some of the software to work.

My theory, and it is a theory because I wasn’t writing software in the late 1960s, is that the engineered software that worked had smart persons working just like that methods that didn’t use engineering. The engineering methods helped keep the less smart persons in the room and understanding a little, but the smart persons carried the day.

I met several companies in the early 1980s who always succeeded in software projects while the software projects from everyone else failed half the time. The succeeding companies had more smart persons.

We hate to attribute success to simply being smarter. That is too personal. Consider, however, that may be the explanation.

by Dwayne Phillips

Please talk concepts, name product names.

There used to be comedy routines back in the 1970s (yes, I am that old) that made fun of daytime soap operas. (For you younger folks, don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything as almost everything on television these days is a soap opera.)

Anyways, the comedians would read the TV Guide (another artifact of the prior millennium) descriptions of the shows, “Sally confronts Dave about his past with Sarah while Bill and Don finally sign their contract even though Bill knows he will double cross Don and agree with Sam.”

Audiences laughed hysterically (we laughed at odd things back in the 1970s). Who in the world were these characters who only had a given name and no family name? How could anyone keep these one-name-only characters straight?

Silly, right?

Well, today we do the same in technology (mis)communication. I read a post today about Google combining Duo and Messages into Meet. I guess this is significant, but seems to be the 2020 version of “Bill will double cross Don and agree with Sam.”

Explain the concepts. Put the product names in parentheses. Think before speaking (communicating). Please.

by Dwayne Phillips

An old person, who was around in the 1970s, looks back at the Waterfall process of software development.

The waterfall process. Of course the pure waterfall doesn’t work, that is why competent persons never used it.

Go way back when and realize that graphics programs (Paint, Draw, Misio) weren’t available. It was hard to draw lots of loops and arrows and such in software process diagrams. The Waterfall process was drawn as a downward steps because that’s all we could draw.

Everyone knew you went back and forth and back and forth. We just didn’t draw that picture because we didn’t have drawing tools.

Well, along came lots of incompetent people. They didn’t think much at work and they didn’t read the descriptions in books and papers. Instead, they looked at the one picture and did it that way. It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. No one with a  brain ever said it would work!

Reality doesn’t appear in a simple block drawing. Who ever thought it would?

So now we have lots of articles about today’s methods that begin by bemoaning our ancestors as stupid waterfall something or others. That is too bad because in some situations—and some of those situations still exist—the waterfall process is the most efficient one.

by Dwayne Phillips

Take great caution when you enter an endeavor with someone who has far more experience than you.

There are occasions in life when we enter a financial agreement in a terribly unbalanced relationship.

One example: a parent dies. I am arranging the funeral, i.e., I am paying for it. I go to the funeral parlor. They arrange funerals several times a day and have been doing this for 20 years. I have never done it before.

A second example: I have written a book and want it published. This is a non-fiction technical book. The publisher publishes 20 books a year like mine and has done so for 50 years. This is my first book AND my first book-publishing contract.

Yikes! I am in trouble.

Well, today—unlike the first time I arranged a funeral and the first time I signed a book-publishing contract—we can go to the Internet and search “things to know the first time you…” That is a tremendous help. A TREMENDOUS help. Please do that.

Regardless, be aware:

1. You are in an unbalanced relationship.
2. You are on the short-end of the experience scale.
3. The other party can easily take advantage of the unbalanced teeter totter.

by Dwayne Phillips

When in doubt, take the easier way. That seems to be the norm.

We bumped into some odd situations this week at work. Four months ago, something was supposed to happen. Something major was supposed to happen.

Nothing happened.

Actually, nothing appeared to happen. Major things did happen. Several persons acted decisively. They decided to take the easier way, not hold discussions with others, and not change the organization in which they worked.

What were the results? People received their salaries. People occupied their time with activities that benefited some other people.

What were not the results? We aren’t sure. We don’t know what we didn’t do and who didn’t receive benefits from those activities.

Regardless of speculation, those who decided on what to do decided to do the easier things. Time marches on. We don’t change much.

by Dwayne Phillips

Most of us profess to like a good story, but do we?

Stories are important. They inform others of our path to where we are today. We love stories.

Or do we love the word “story?”

If we love stories, we would tell them often. We would type the words to the story so that others could “hear” the story later by reading those words.

In my experience, I find far more persons who like story than who will type the words to a story. They seem to love the word “story” more than an actual story.

I guess I have this all wrong. There is some fear of typing words that freezes persons. Maybe English teachers in public schools did this to people over the generations. “I’m not a writer.” Odd, everyone I know who has told me this was able to talk.

There is something about typing the words that we say that has been beaten out of us.

And who says public schools are not effective at teaching? Perhaps some teachers teach love of the word “story” without teaching love of story.

by Dwayne Phillips

What interests me today? The project that I am working today? Perhaps not.

I know I am working on this project today, but it is just another project. Sure, I want it to succeed, but really, it’s just another one.

What really interests me is finding the BIG IDEA. That thing that I will turn into a big open-source project that thousands of programmers will love and work with me. I will be famous and give $10,000 appearances every week (all expenses paid first class).

The BIG IDEA is so much better than this project. That is why this project isn’t doing so well, but it will be okay. I mean, it’s just another project. There are many and will be many more until I find that BIG IDEA.

Okay, let’s switch from me “the dreamer of BIG IDEAS” to me the project manager. Are the people working on this project with me devoted to the success of this project? Are these persons dreaming instead of something else?

It is to our benefit for me to take time and ask. Take time and have a conversation about today and tomorrow and dreams.

And have the humility to wish that someone on this project will have a BIG IDEA and all those BIG IDEA dreams will come true for them.

by Dwayne Phillips

We each have threats that we value and threats that we ignore.

I sit here in a coffee shop drinking plain old coffee while writing. In the year of the virus, persons walk in wearing their theatrical masks to show concern for a threat. They grab their coffee, walk out, and sit in their giant SUV parked in front of the sign that reads:

NO PARKING…FIRE ZONE

Hmmm, if there was a fire, all the persons in all the shops in this shopping center would be in immediate danger of death and that giant SUV would block the fire fighters and…

Not to worry, these persons are good persons as evidenced by their masks that have logos on them from all the current protests that amplify how good a good person is this week.

We each have our own threats that we value and threats that we ignore. The virus and the mask are more important to some than the fire hazard or the pollution hazard from a massive internal combustion engine in a massive 15-person vehicle in which no more than two persons usually ride.

Life goes on in the year of the virus. The more things are far out of the ordinary, the more we are the same.