Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s take a breath and pause regarding all this “stop fake news.”

We have to stop fake news. It is ruining civilization. It ruined an election. It is wreaking havoc around the world. Come on everyone, when you see fake news, label it, punish it, eradicate it.

Well, perhaps some pause is in order. I label such and such fake news, that is an editorial on my part. That is my opinion.

“This is fake, see that for the truth,” I shout aloud with all my lungs.

And it is censorship. “This person must shut up!”

Of course I can work around all these not-so-nice words like censorship and justify how when you turn on the lights the roaches run away and all that. Still, let’s not kid ourselves.

Someone once said that we could solve the longitude problem with a pocket watch. Fake News! (well, not really)

Someone once said the hysteria was not a female condition. Fake News! (well, not really)

Fake News! Censorship?

by Dwayne Phillips

The day we fixed a supercomputer with a cardboard box.

I suppose this post has to do with good old American ingenuity or some myth we like to create about ourselves. Regardless of myths and selective memory, this is actually a true story.

On the job we had serial number one of a supercomputer. Yes, we bought the first one. Perhaps a bit over-optimistic on our part bordering on the foolhardy. Well, good old serial number one wasn’t working. It was constantly rebooting itself after it lost its mind. Not good for something that cost $6 Million (in 1990 dollars).

Part of the many long distance phone conversations (yes, in those days we still used the term “long distance call” when calling coast to coast), was a mention of cooling, over heating and other such thermal things.

Good old serial number one was sitting atop a raised floor with (supposedly) enough cold air blasting up its innards to allow it to function. Right in front of the rack, yes supercomputers used to require an entire, full-height 19″ rack, was a vent on the floor.

Someone, I’ll take the credit here, had the goofy idea of taking a cardboard box, sitting it on the cold-air vent, and using it to force the cold air into the middle of the good old serial number one. A knife, some masking tape and no one in senior management watching, and we had an ugly something-or-other pushing cold air into the computer.

It worked. In five minutes, the $6 million supercomputer was super computing.

Lesson #1: Try things.

Lesson #2: Pay attention to the conversations. The mention of thermal properties was a quiet, slight, and quick one. Someone on our side of the continent heard it and remembered it. There are lots of little things passed in conversations. It is a good idea to listen for them.

I suppose this is another example of people telling your their problems and the solutions. We have to notice.

by Dwayne Phillips

The basic steps I have used to writing a professional, non-fiction book and having it published.

I have written about half-a-dozen professional non-fiction books. The counting is a bit fuzzy when you include a second edition or two here and there. These were published by the IEEE and other publishers of such books.

I have met members of my profession who are itching to do the same. They ask me, “How did you write that book?”

For the (somewhat boring) record:

Step 1 – Write a book. Use a basic word processor. Write chapters in a logical order (consult already published books). Create a lot of figures. There, now you have a book.

Step 1a – I sure learned a lot by doing the research, thinking through everything, making my thoughts clear enough to express in writing. Hence, if you stop here, you are much smarter than before.

Step 2 – Now that I have learned so much…do I even care that it is “published.”

Step 3 – Decide how to publish.

a. Just make a PDF and put it out there.

b. Write publishers describing your book that you have in hand.

b.2. They will want editing. Lots of editing work that will probably double the amount of work done to date.

Here is the odd part, at least it was odd to me. Every year, publishers send contracts to people saying, “If you deliver a book to us that meets blah blah blah, we will publish it and pay you royalties.” Every year, the majority of interested writers sign the contract, but do not deliver a book. The writing (Step 1. above), proves more difficult than anticipated or something.

That is why I have the steps in the order they appear above. Write a book first. Once in hand, approach publishers. Seems backwards? Not what you have read? Well, these are professional, non-fiction books. These are not romance novels, novels about teenage girls who fall in love with werewolves, or teenage girls who save the world with a bow and arrow.

And that is how I wrote that book.

by Dwayne Phillips

A problem with being right is that learning tends to cease.

There is a problem with being right or being on the right side in many senses of the phrase: learning tends to cease or at least greatly decrease.

Consider what I used to tell boys when I coached them in various sports. It was a paraphrase of what consultant and author Jerry Weinberg told me: “You can’t always choose to win, but you can always choose to learn.”

In sports and games and such, “winning” is often out of my control. There are other players, there are coaches, and there are referees of one sort or another. I don’t choose to win or lose. I can choose to learn from whatever the contest or outcome may be.

I go to a job each day. I don’t choose the outcome of the day. Things may “go well” today (that usually means they go MY WAY). Things may not go quite as well as they should. Still, I can choose to learn whatever the process or outcome may be.

Sometimes we have disagreements on how to proceed. If I am “right,” i.e., I get MY WAY, well that is great. I go home unchanged. Well, maybe that isn’t so great as unchanged means that my thinking hasn’t changed in any way. Rats, I haven’t learned anything. I was so intent on being right, things going MY WAY, that I forget to learn.

I can, however, be “right” and still learn. Yes, that is true. The trouble is, at least the trouble with me is, I tend not to learn when I am right. I tend to glow in my right-ness, and that bright light blinds me to new information and learning.

Have I been “right” a little too much lately?

by Dwayne Phillips

In many ways, using agile development guarantees success by definition.

I was recently reading of a failed Federal government software program. Of course hundreds of millions of dollars were spent with nothing to show for it. The tale of woe consumed pages.

Then there was one more paragraph that stated, “the government hired another contractor that used agile development and succeeded.”

WOW! That was all that was needed. Agile meant success.

Funny thing about this story: I have read the same story a dozen times. Agile always led to success. That is A M A Z I N G…but I couldn’t leave that alone, I had to ponder it a bit. (Woe is me!)

Agile development is basically:

1. Start with an idea
2. Build a little
3. Learn a little
4. Alter the idea
5. Repeat steps 2. through 4.

At some point, we are at step 5. and declare success. We are HERE and have traveled some Agile path to arrive HERE. Agile succeeded in bringing us HERE. Therefore, when applying Agile, we cannot fail because where ever HERE is, Agile brought us HERE and this is the Agile result.

Perhaps, however, we should have arrived THERE, not HERE. Aha! That statement is wrong. We cannot judge HERE by any other criteria. Those judgement deny the fundamental five steps of Agile stated earlier.

Therefore, by definition, Agile leads to success. No matter what HERE is.

Any questions?

by Dwayne Phillips

Now that the title has infuriated everyone…let’s consider what Agile development does for me the customer.

In the previous millennium, customers would decide what they wanted software to do, tell that to a group of persons who wrote software, and come back later at the delivery date.

Time marched on, as it usually does, and we decided (no one asked me for my vote on that day) the above pre-post-modern method no longer worked. We needed to do things another way. We needed a method that allowed me, the customer, to change my mind. I often changed my mind. My mind was full of so many swirling ideas that I couldn’t settle on any one and “stick to it.” Besides, “sticking to it” was one of those pre-post-modern artifacts like chiselling words into granite. We had word processors and, well, you know.

We invented the agile development methods. I could change my mind every two weeks. Huh, sometimes I could change my mind everyday! We had someone called The Scrum Master (why didn’t we name that a Jedi Master?) who would guide everyone like only a Master can guide.

In Agile development, the Agile team, led by the Agile Master, managed my swirling mind with all its daily insights of brilliance. What could be better than this? This is certainly superior to the previous millennium where I had to manage myself.

Aha! Perhaps that is it.

I love Agile because it allows me to hire someone else to manage me. I no longer have to manage myself.

Perhaps I should lie down and take a nap and stay out of trouble.

The above has some humor in it. I hope the humor masks the other stuff.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is usually my loss when I form a first impression of another person.

“You only have one chance to make a first impression.” Blah, blah, blah, and on we go.

Most of the cliches about first impressions tend to put the burden of work on the new person trying to make the impression. What I find, however, is that those meeting the new person have to work hard or we lose.

First impressions are lasting. That is because us old hands meeting the new person tend to be, let’s see, how should I write this? Stupid.

We hire a person to do a menial job. They earn a degree or two while working with us. We never give them credit for their advancing education and skill. We still see the menial task doer who walked in the first day. Hence, they leave and go somewhere else where someone will appreciate them for what they can do. We lose. We are stupid.

The Washington Redskins find themselves in such a stupid predicament at this time. They have a quarterback whom they drafted in a late round the same year they drafted a supposed, but not realized, super-duper star. They can’t move past their first impression of their current quarterback. They can’t sign him to a big contract because they still see that skinny guy who drove up in a cheap old car and took his seat in the back of the room. They are, uh, er, stupid.

Well, let’s try not to be so stupid. The persons who walk in the door each day are not the same persons who walked in the door yesterday let alone five years ago. Each person changes and grows each day. Let’s be smart enough to value each person each day.

by Dwayne Phillips

We consider what the world calls “computer programmers” these days.

Developers. That is what we seem to call computer programmers these days. I work in a building with perhaps a hundred developers. “Are you a developer?” people ask me. Sigh.

The trouble is, these developers are not developers because they aren’t developing software. They are maintainers because they are maintaining software. No one calls anyone a “maintainer.” At least I haven’t heard that term.

Let’s back up a few steps and consider software maintenance. The majority of computer programming is in software maintenance. Hence, the majority of money for computer programmers is in software maintenance. Few, however, consider the latter $$$.

(For more information on software maintenance, search Amazon.com for many books. A classic text is listed here.)

Software maintenance starts with an existing computer program. The maintainer changes the software in one of three ways:

1. Adaptive
2. Perfective
3. Corrective

Adaptive changes adapt the software to new requirements. This is the most development-oriented type of maintenance. Perfective changes to software so that it is better in some sense (faster, less memory, less electric power, etc.). Corrective ensures that 2+2=4, not 3.

Consider Microsoft Word (why not?). The first version was released, well, I don’t know, some long time ago. Hence, 98.6% of all work on MS Word has been software maintenance.

Consider Agile Development (everyone does this, right?). The first release comes after the first sprint or whatever we call that first short period of time. Thereafter, all programming is software maintenance.

Simple stuff. Simple title. Rarely used. Oh well. We carry on, sometimes in reverse.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some of the best-written pieces were done “on the spur of the moment” at a writing event. That includes week-long events and one-hour events.

The summary above is true in my experience.

I have read pieces written in five-minute exercises, “Okay, everyone write. I will ring the bell in five minutes or so.”

I have read masterpieces written in one-hour exercises, “Okay, everyone write. I will call you back in an hour.”

Why? Okay, here is a brilliant insight. Some persons attend a writing event ready to burst. They have years worth of writing inside them. They settle into the event, and someone says the magic word, “Write.”

That’s about it folks. The magic word carries with it, “(I give you permission to) Write.”

A-h-h-h-h-h. Permission. Safety. Release. It flows. Magic.

The “teacher” at the writing event is actually the “giver of permission,” and nothing more. Want to appear to be a genius? Host a writing event, give permission, and look brilliant.

by Dwayne Phillips

The best schools: do they teach any better or simply ruin fewer students?

Ah, here is yet another list of the best schools (this one is about computer science). I didn’t attend any of these as I could not afford it. Rich kids go to these schools. Their rich parents’ extraordinary tuition checks pay for scholarships for the poorer and smarter others who attend.

Do these better schools teach any better? I doubt it. Math is math. History is history. Java and those other programming languages…well, you can learn them in a free online course.

How is it that the graduates of these “better schools” do better than the graduates of those lesser schools (like the ones I attended)?

Here is a thought: the students at the better schools know more when they arrive. The students either went to expensive private schools all their lives or they were poor but actually talented.

The better schools start with brighter students. Still, there are bright students attending the lesser schools. What happens?

Here is another thought: the better schools don’t ruin as many bright students as the lesser schools.

Consultant and author Jerry Weinberg has this saying (apologies as I can’t remember it exactly, so here is a bad paraphrase) regarding his goal as a teacher:

the students leave class not being less interested in the topic as when they arrived.

Paraphrase of the paraphrase:

he doesn’t ruin the student.

Here is a tip for the lesser schools: learn how you ruin students and stop doing those things.