Slashdot Mirror

Reminds me of a joke

Jake is struggling through a bus station with two huge and obviously heavy suitcases when a stranger walks up to him and asks "Have you got the time?"

Jake sighs, puts down the suitcases and glances at his wrist. "It's a quarter to six," he says.

"Hey, that's a pretty fancy watch!" exclaims the stranger. Jake brightens a little.

"Yeah, it's not bad. Check this out" - and he shows him a time zone display not just for every time zone in the world, but for the 86 largest metropolises.

He hits a few buttons and from somewhere on the watch a voice says "The time is eleven 'til six" in a very West Texas accent. A few more buttons and the same voice says something in Japanese. Jake continues "I've put in regional accents for each city". The display is unbelievably high quality and the voice is simply astounding.

The stranger is struck dumb with admiration. "That's not all", says Jake. He pushes a few more buttons and a tiny but very high-resolution map of New York City appears on the display. "The flashing dot shows our location by satellite positioning," explains Jake.

"View recede ten", Jake says, and the display changes to show eastern New York state.

"I want to buy this watch!" says the stranger.

"Oh, no, it's not ready for sale yet; I'm still working out the bugs", says the inventor.

"But look at this", and he proceeds to demonstrate that the watch is also a very creditable little FM radio receiver with a digital tuner, a sonar device that can measure distances up to 125 meters, a pager with thermal paper printout and, most impressive of all, the capacity for voice recordings of up to 300 standard-size books, "though I only have 32 of my favorites in there so far" says Jake.

"I've got to have this watch!", says the stranger.

"No, you don't understand; it's not ready -"

"I'll give you $1000 for it!"

"Oh, no, I've already spent more than -"

"I'll give you $5000 for it!"

"But it's just not -"

"I'll give you $15,000 for it!" And the stranger pulls out a checkbook.

Jake stops to think. He's only put about $8500 into materials and development, and with $15,000 he can make another one and have it ready for merchandising in only six months. The stranger frantically finishes writing the check and waves it in front of him. "Here it is, ready to hand to you right here and now. $15,000. Take it or leave it."

Jake abruptly makes his decision. "OK", he says, and peels off the watch.

They make the exchange and the stranger starts happily away. "Hey, wait a minute", calls Jake after the stranger, who turns around warily. Jake points to the two suitcases he'd been trying to wrestle through the bus station. "Don't forget your batteries.

That and doing all the horrible wrangling with project management systems, clarifying user requirements coming from PMs and translating them into sanity, and so on. The more senior I become, the less time I spend coding, because there's only so much value I add working by myself.

1) Why are you wrangling with project management systems? The amount of time you spend with that should be minimal, otherwise it's hurting you. Are you trying to update all the features to the next sprint or something? That's a waste of time, don't do it.

2) If you need to 'translate user requirements from PMs' on a regular basis, it sounds like you are micro-managing a part of the process. If that's the case, then you can gain efficiencies by teaching your developers to do that. Push as many responsibilities down to the developers as you can, and watch how much more focused, effective, and efficient they become. MMM calls it like magic. A good metric to test yourself for how you are doing: if you disappeared, would the team continue functioning normally (even getting requirements from PM, etc)? If the answer is yes, then you are doing it right.

3) Be careful, if you aren't programming, you're on the road to the executive here. Seriously, re-find the joy in programming. If you can't do it, then your developers will secretly look down on you, and you'll be missing a level of motivation that you could have.

True but I haven't seen much academic example code that has plenty of logging in them.

In the real world much good code is filled with exception handling and logs. Because for almost anything that you try or call something wrong/else could happen or something could send you a SIGTERM or similar. You'd leave out the logging in the high performance processing loops, but in the real world those often are only a very small part of the code.

So it's not just most real world code that sucks in the real world, most academic style code would also suck too. ;)

Yes there are different logging systems, but you can pick one or two as examples - after all there are also many computer programming languages and most academic courses still teach at least one programming language.

Anyway the story also reminds me of: http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html ;)

It seems appropriate to bring up that C++ was all one big joke: http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/An_Interview_with_Bjarne_Stroustrup.html

It's not just you.

Fact is they are hopeless. They'll never get it. They will wreck most
projects that they are involved in, and will try and get out before
any accountability takes place.

Ever see this?

http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_P rogrammer.html

"And this is why they should be letting a professional set their stuff up. If you knew nothing about cars, would you try to put an engine together and then drop it in by yourself"

When you buy a car, most people expect to insert the key in the ignition and put their foot on the accelerator. They don't expect to be handed the components and a 900 page manual and be expected to assemble it themselves. Why can't the average user go into a shop, buy a computer, bring it home and expect it to work - out of the box.

Go here for a laugh. If cars were like computers

http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_P rogrammer.html

There's a million things I could reply to this, but quite frankly I do not have the time.

Richard Stallman has written a nifty speech in which he enumerates several things that are wrong about software patents.

Among them:

- If you write your new program, you'd probably have to use dozens of patented techniques; which you couldn't afford to license.

- You will learn about this after the fact.

- The guy-down-the-street turns out to be Big Software Corp, who crosslicenses a single one of it's patents with you, and still lets you pay through the nose for all the others it owns.

Quite frankly, given the choice between your scenario and Stallman's, I'd _prefer_ the guy down the street taking my code. Then at least somebody would benefit from my hard work.

The only way you can win this game, is if you do _not_ develop software, but only own patents. (Think Eolas.) Oh, and you also win if you are a lawyer, of course.

let me stick my pirated version of War and Piece in my Hello world application.

Well, if your Hello world application was written in the style of Master Programmer from the old joke... you can easily fit the whole collected works by Fedor Dostoevsky.

That's from Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts).

Fourth one down

Would that be this one?

Having sounded the obligatory note of caution, I'm all for people devoting time, energy, money, expertise and computers to groups who don't have computer access. Admittedly I'd find social equality campaigns, soup kitchens, and organisations to reduce homelessness more of a pressing issue myself, but hey, if your skills are in IT, then use 'em there. I've heard stories locally (UK) that you can ring up the offices of charities for the blind with "We've got a load of computers to get rid of..." and they'll be round with a van that same day. (I've also heard tales of woe from people who have trouble using the special software that is necessary for the blind. Providing support and assistance is as important as providing the machines. At least.)

Anyway, just some rambles from someone who has found voluntary work in various sectors a productive way to spend time.