Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Could we simply speak English? Could we try to speak in a way that makes it difficult to misunderstand?

It would be nice if we both simply spoke English and tossed in a few diagrams to illustrate our thoughts.

Slang? I may not know your slang. You may not know mine. We could see who can say the most slang that is not known to the other person.

I would win as I am older and know more. I read “The Hacker’s Dictionary” and know The Jargon File. (Have you even heard of those things?) Big deal, that won’t help us communicate.

So, could we both simply speak English and toss in a few diagrams to illustrate our thoughts?

by Dwayne Phillips

Improving what and how we do things is a touchy subject. Approach it carefully.

“I wish they would do better,” said the optimist.

“They are awful at this,” said the disgusted.

“Improve,” said the commander.

And what other stereotypical comments can we make when we see someone do something poorly?

First, what does this matter to me? Does someone else doing something less than I want affect me? Often, the answer is, “Yes.” The person is part of our organization and presenting to another group that pays our salaries. Poorly performing means no pay check next week. The opposite case is that poorly performing is merely an irritation to me, and I need to move on.

Next, assume it matters to me. Now what? Speak clearly for myself and speak to the outcome of the event.

“John, when you present our capabilities, I see our customers wincing and furrowing their brows. The next day I receive messages of displeasure from them. Have you noticed any of this? Do you receive any of these messages?”

In my experience, John has neither seen the body language nor received the emails. Once he sees those cues, how does he react?

There are places that give instruction in how better to present materials or whatever it is we are attempting to do. “John, are you aware of these places that show how to present materials?”

Once we are aware of negative reactions and know of places of instruction, what do we do? Now we reach the more difficult question. Now we have to decide the bigger issue. Such is the nature of trying to be adults.

by Dwayne Phillips

We review some fundamental concepts of programming and building things using any other technique.

Now and then in conversations with well-learned and well-accomplished persons, I find that they lack in some of the basics I had the privilege to learn many years ago. It seems that we either forget these or never have the benefit of learning them.

Here are the two main principles of David Parnas (there are many sources online and elsewhere of these):

1. The developer of a software component must provide the intended user with all the information needed to make effective use of the services provided by the component, and should provide no other information.
2. The implementor of a software component must be provided with all the information necessary to carry out the given responsibilities assigned to the component, and should be provided with no other information.

Number 1: I built some thing that you can use. I tell you how to use it and nothing else. If I tell you the inner workings, well, we could all find ourselves in all sorts of trouble. Think not? See, for example, hacking into systems that were not supposed to be hackable.

Number 2: When I am building a thing that you can use, I must be told all the things it is supposed to do and nothing else. If I know all the details of the rest of the world and how all others in the world might want to use this and everything else, well, we could all find ourselves in all sorts of trouble.

But I want to know more! Good for you. Curiosity and learning are wonderful things when applied appropriately. It is unfortunate that in learning, sometimes we all fail to learn when to stop learning. Some persons misuse what they learn.

End of short review. I encourage further digging if these are new to you or you forgot them long ago and just remembered them.

by Dwayne Phillips

Events occur constantly. Each is an opportunity to observe and learn and learn to observe ourselves.

The title of this post is one of those questions that a person can ask another after any event on any day.

It is personal as it is about the other person. I don’t care if someone was trying to teach the times tables from 1 through 13. What did you learn?

• I learned that I hate memorizing things.
• I learned that half of the times tables are already in the other half.
• I learned that I could punch up the answer on my watch so fast that I didn’t need to learn the answers.

The question is also a spur to learning. No matter what the event, learning is available to each of us. It is up to us to choose to learn or not.

The question is also a spur to observing. Events occur constantly. Did you notice the last three events that happened this morning?

The question is a constant training of observing and learning. Often we should learn to observe ourselves and what we just learned from that squirrel running across the law and that little bird that landed in the tree outside the window.

Life is full. We can pull from that fullness. It is our choice.

by Dwayne Phillips

The person who picks the adjectives have the power.

I heard an idea. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea?

The difference between “good” and “bad” is which adjective is attached to the noun. The person who chooses which adjective has the power. That person interpreted the idea in light of the current situation. That person put the idea in one corner or other of the room.

This falls into the Interpretation past of the Satir Model of Interaction (one description of this model is here.) Weinberg called it Meaning and Significance.

Whatever phase of whatever model you might prefer, the person who picks the adjective has the power. That person also has the first opportunity to be wrong.

With great power comes, well, you know, the chance to judge poorly.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes research leads old guys to remember lessons from way back. Crisis helps us forget to our peril

The other day at work, we were speaking with a thought leader in an area of technology. This person truly is an expert and a thought leader in the future of his area.

The future belongs to those who:

• have modular designs (architecture is the words everyone uses today)
• flexible in thought
• can change
• have portable software
• a few more

Wait, I heard these things in the late 1970s. Have most people forgotten these things? Have most people never heard of these things?

Another thought: in the recent past, we lurch from one crisis to another. A crisis causes us to put some software out there quickly. Do something that works now. We will refactor or fix it real soon now. We wake a year later and “real soon now” hasn’t arrived. We have a mess. I suppose we call that “technical debt.”

Crisis gives us a reason to forget the things we know we should do. The human condition remains. Let’s try to remember what we know.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes, I want to talk with another person about something. Is that what I really want?

I have heard a concern expressed in many ways, including:

• We haven’t talked about this
• We need to talk about this sometime
• I want to talk about this
• I want to tell you something

These are different ways to say the same thing. None, however, state what we want to state. That is, “You haven’t acknowledged my concerns.”

You nodded your head, patronized me, and walked away unchanged
The “changed” part is crucial. You haven’t acted like you changed (the way I wanted you to change).

Perhaps, the other person (or me when I am the other person) should say, “This is what I heard you say.” (Repeat as best as I can.) I think you are feeling this and that. Those are major concerns. What would you like me to do?” (This is not a promise to do what the other person wants, but a promise to hear what the other person wants.)

End with, “I am happy that we could talk about this.”

by Dwayne Phillips

Remote work has its efficiencies and time savers. It isn’t all efficient. There are parts that are wasteful. There are places where we multiply waste. Beware. Learn.

Remote work saves a lot of time. Some of my colleagues spend several hours a day commuting. Working remote, as some of us have done recently, makes their days much more efficient. They work more, have more leisure time, and have a better life.

What could be wrong with that? I mean we have all these Zooming-Slacking-Teams by which we stay in touch. This is great. No trade-offs, right?

Sorry. We always trade one thing for another. Remote work has its inefficiencies.

These audio-video-remote meetings have their stumbles. When is someone finished talking so I can say what I want? What is it that causes us to talk over one another and stop and start and wait and… If you have been in a few remote meetings, you have experienced it. I guess there is enough lag in transmission and reception that our timing is unnatural and we stumble.

Inefficient meetings.

And then we over compensate. Being remote, we want to show everyone that we still accomplish as much. We want to show everyone that we still communicate as much.

We schedule more remote meetings than we have face-to-face meetings when we are really “at work.” Instead of two meetings of half-an-hour each, we have five. And each half-hour meeting is preceded by five or ten minutes of getting on early so we are sure to be on at the appointed time.

Too many meetings.

Gosh. This was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be all good with no bad.

We could learn to make the inefficient meetings more efficient. We are pretty smart and can learn, right? And we could also learn not to schedule the extra meetings. We are pretty smart and can learn, right?

Let’s be pretty smart and learn. Then again, something tells me that we will find some other problems. Nothing is perfect. There are always trade offs.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are persons and things that we don’t notice much, but who keep everything working and everyone smiling. Please notice and appreciate.

lip: noun, the edge of a hollow container or an opening.
“drawing her finger around the lip of the cup”

Behold the wonder of the lip, that protruding edge that allows gravity to hold the lid on something. The lip really does a great favor to all of us. It is so simple, yet it works continuously.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some persons in your workplace who are always working. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some software app that you use without noticing it. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

At this point, I am supposed to draw some similarity between the lip and some other person or thing that goes without much notice but keeps everything functioning or everyone smiling. I leave this as an exercise to the reader. You can do this.

by Dwayne Phillips

I don’t like the metaphor of the software “pipeline,” never have. Here is one explanation why.

I recently wrote of my distaste for the metaphor of the software stack. Now I express a similar distaste for the software pipeline.

Perhaps this goes back to the Unix pipe—shown with the “|” vertical bar. In Unix, and henceforth in all the xnix variations and Linux distributions, different operations were connected by the pipe. The output of one operation flowed into the input of the next. These were all file based in one way or another. The pipe did nothing but eliminate the names of the temporary files.

Pipes in the real world are transport mechanisms. They do no processing on there own. (The lone exception being the heat exchanger, and I cannot think of a software equivalent.)

Somehow and somewhere, we consider software pipelines as doing some processing from the trail of idea to running software. I fail to see this. But again, it is merely a figure of speech and we shouldn’t take it seriously.

If we are going to use some words, we might as well use useful words as they take just as much effort the first time and much less effort the rest of the time as we try to explain what we meant by using the wrong word.

Just a thought. You can only be mad at me for ten minutes.