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Mass Fatality Identification System

Posted by timothy on from the strange-necessites dept.

Shipud writes " Bio-IT World is running a story on how Gene Codes corporation created the Mass Fatality Identification System (M-FISys) in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The story goes into the details of processing large amounts of data, aiming for a 99.9% accuracy rate, and extreme programing."

14 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. extreme! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    extreme programing

    One of the philosophies of extreme programming is "once and only once". Glad to see you applying this philosophy to that redundant "M"! Down with unnecessary repetition!

  2. Handy after a nuclear war by torklugnutz · · Score: 4, Funny

    In the even of identification will be done in the following manner: The 30 of us that survive, that aren't cockroaches, please raise your hands.

    --
    Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
  3. Wheeee! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mass fatality system! Oh boy! All of my many nefarious plans will see fruition, I just hope it's open source. Oh, it's an Identification system? Slot off /.!

  4. am I the only one.... by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who absolutely positively -HATES- the idea of 'paired programming'? While I wholeheartedly agree with having lots of meetings and discussions during the design phase (requirements, functional spec, detailed design) and during the review phase (post mortem, code reviews) I feel that having two coders on one computer is extremely wasteful and unbelievably stressful.

    When I'm in the 'zone' I can't talk with somebody else, I can't verbalize why I'm writing a code fragment the way I am writing it without getting yanked out of it. If the design is done well, and programmers are fairly equally competent, pairing two of them is going to probably be LESS productive than having only ONE, let alone two.

    The only time I can see paired programming being useful would be in a tutoring way, where coder A that has lots of experience with the codebase is paired with coder B that has never seen it, but this is more for getting coder B up to speed rather than to improve productivity and code quality.

    --
    -- the cake is a lie
    1. Re:am I the only one.... by lawpoop · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Extreme programming was designed for a team of developers. It takes a while to get in the 'zone', eh? What does your 'zone' code look like? Is it well-commented? Readable? If so, you are alright without extreme progamming.

      The idea of extreme programming is that it forces you to make readable code, simply because of the fact that you're in the presence of someone else.

      If you're in a project where you won't be responsible for the code you write later on, it would be a waste of time to have you write any code at all, if it takes that much time to decipher it.

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
    2. Re:am I the only one.... by BlueGecko · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I definitely agree that having two programmers sitting next to each other is very distracting and ultimately counterproductive (at least for me). However, I have found that the Mac programming editor SubEthaEdit (formerly known as Hydra, but recently renamed due to legal issues) can be a tremendously productive alternative. In essence, you can think of it as an alternative implementation of paired programming. SubEthaEdit allows multiple users to edit a single document in real time. It uses color coding to distinguish who has added a modified what parts of the text to make real-time version tracking easy even in an highly chaotic environment, and even supports a fairly intelligent undo system. I've found that you get the benefits of paired programming (multiple people working and reviewing code at once), yet you also don't have to constantly explain everything as you're going or have that annoyance of someone leading over your shoulder, craning at the screen. Best of all, it becomes practical to have more than two people working on a single file at once. If you want, you can do NASA-style programming and have two people just searching for bugs and two people just coding. The results can be quite spectacular. SubEthaEdit may be not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'd highly recommend you at least take a look.

    3. Re:am I the only one.... by kevinvee · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Throughout my higher education we have had paired and extreme programming shoved down our throats. I consider myself to be a fairly competent programmer, and have worked with others that have a wide array of skill sets. It has helped me personally in dealing with people that have such a wide array of skill sets. My communication skills have improved drastically. I'm sure there are other things which factored in to this, but paired programming certainly played a big role. My experiences overall have been pleasant. This is entirely subjective. I know people that feel completely different, and will rationalize it to the end. But, when I have worked with less knowledgable programmers we are able to get tasks done in almost the same amount of time it would have taken me to do it by myself, and a small fraction of the time it would have taken the other person to do it. When I work with people that have similar capabilities, and especially when we have personalities that work well together, we are able to get a ton more accomplished together than we ever could individually. And, when I work with people more knowledgable than mine, the earlier situation is reversed and I have the opportunity to learn at an accelerated pace. The most helpful thing I have found in my paired programming experiences is to have an open mind because in that kind of a close environment your ideas and thoughts can be trampled on rather quickly, and you have to be able to accept that environment and both acknowledge that some solutions are better and be able to rationalize any decisions you are making. In my experience it is entirely worth it. The code usually has less bugs when testing, and the end product is much more understandable in terms of structure and future upkeep.

    4. Re:am I the only one.... by panaceaa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I hate paired programming too but my roommate is a proponent of it. He says that average coders have a hard time staying on focus and are often lured by quick hacks rather than doing needed redesigns. When you pair two of these programmers together, with a stated goal of following extreme programming practices, they're ultimately more productive because they have to explain their decisions and not slack off.

      But my roommate agrees, that for competent and motivated coders, who actaully know what they're doing and take pride in their work, extreme programming's paired programming fails. However, the software industry is not filled with competent and motivated coders. Most software developers graduated in CS for the money, without writing a lick of code before CS 101, and they could use a good deal of oversight.

      --
      my blog
    5. Re:am I the only one.... by marko123 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'll look at it, but I can imagine myself just pissing off my programming partner by inserting characters right where her cursor is until she smashes the backspace key... on my head.

      --
      http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
    6. Re:am I the only one.... by monkeyboy87 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Why do you find it stressful? because you have to share space with another carbon unit? yes, there are situations where pairings can lead to friction - for me if the "pair" is a slow or hunt/peck typer i insist on driving.

      on the upside you get the following benefits:

      0) two people looking/reviewing the code as its written you get a review/concensus of two people thinking the code as written was a good idea. vs a guy alone in an office who creates something only they can understand/debug/modify which then has to be justified to the group after the time/cost/effort have been expended. I am sure you have reviewed code after it was written and walked away saying "WTF was Ken thinking when he wrote this POS!" With pairing you can keep Ken from polluting the code base or if nothing else be his accomplice in his misdeeds.

      1) you aren't likely to "launch make" to justify surfing with someone in your office. while you might be dedicated to being productive you can probably name 2-3 people in cubes/offices around who are more "wired" than working.

      2) As someone pointed out it can help facilitate rehabilitating weaker team members who (if they have a clue) will gain from the experience locked away inside the stronger more gifted programmers.

      On the otherside if you hate the "working in pairs bit", you can still adopt the other things XP advocates like test driven/test first programming you and can get a quantum leap in reliablity. I always look at XP as the manfestation of Demmings TQC/TQM applied to programming.

  5. Hmm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see..

    new technology ... check.
    mass fatatilies ... check.
    extreme programming ... check.

    Yep, Slashdotters will love this one. :)

  6. Re:Cash, Howard Cash by gazoombo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Approaching the second anniversary of Sept. 11, 1,521 of the 2,792 people who perished in the WTC disaster have been identified.
    It does take time. Rember that every single positive ID that is made is a life that has been lost. Imagine the familes associated with these 'numbers' and mass ID. I do not appriciate your comment.

    --
    John Hancock
  7. How ironic... by BladeMelbourne · · Score: 4, Funny
    Isn't it ironic that the Extreme Programming site is written in HTML 3.2 & JavaScript 1.0?

    Markup languages are hardly extreme, but surely they could push the bounds of the latest standards and do something truely extreme. ;-)

    Mike

  8. Remember...in extreme programming by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny
    There is no 'I' in team, but there is a 'me' in extreme.

    There is also a 'ramming' in programming, but I got nothin' for that.