Coding and being productive

By Nick Hortovanyi

I still cut code! Yes, and I enjoy doing so. But many people, have never learnt to or have forgotten how to and the mere thought of writing a computer program is considered to be an inane task, that should be given to others.

When its given to others, a considerable amount of effort is required to translate domain knowledge into a form that the developer can learn from and then use to write the application. Most people underestimate the amount of effort involved here, the complexity of writing down, I mean really spelling out in its simplest form what needs to be achieved and hence do not put the effort into the required activities. This leads to a mismatch of expectations and systems developed that don't meet the dreams and aspirations of the original requestors.

How do you fix it? The simplest way (forgetting politics and previous training) is to get the people with domain knowledge to be stronger participants in the construction of the system. Am I saying that they should cut code? Yes!

They will understand what is feasible and realistic to be achieved. Far too often, I see one sentence requirements, being one of many functional requirements, that upon further investigation would require their own system to satisfy.

I saw today an interesting post on 3quarksdaily where a US College will be training Journalists also in IT. That is combining the skill sets, so Journalists will be code savvy.

Where else does this issue exist? It actually exists in ICT itself, where Business Analysts, in Analytics focused organisations, have developed strong skills in Spreadsheets (eg Excel) but can't write programs to harness data from other sources (eg online data from government or other providing organisations). What happens when the volume of data grows to Terabyte or greater sizes? Are these guys going to be able to process the data in Excel? More importantly are they going to be able to respond in a timely manner to ensure the Analytics that they produce give you a competitive advantage?

There is a wealth of new information being created that can be consumed through electronic means over the internet by writing a computer program. He who can leverage it in a timely manner has an advantage.

Tags coding productivity ict programming knowledge   |  Comments 0

Giving up on Microsoft software for work - initial status report

By Nick Hortovanyi

My monitor blanked out on my Windows XP based IBM T42p Thinkpad. Worry crossed my mind, as I thought the machine had died. Quickly, I realised that the monitor had turned itself off for no reason. I rebooted (as it was a Windows machine) and the system came back.

I didn't think much more about it, until about two and half weeks ago, when it started happening again. I would press FN+F3 and eventually the display would return. This worked for a couple of days, until I was performing the reset every few minutes. At that point the system was no longer usable.

I moved over to my OpenSuSe 10.3 Linux desktop and decided to retire the Windows XP Thinkpad. We already run all our servers on Linux. So "Yes", I decided to make the move away from Microsoft software for work as well as general desktop computing. This was going to be interesting.

Now, I had a Desktop back and quickly got my Email, Lotus Sametime and Skype working. I hit a little bit of a hurdle with twhirl, an Adobe AIR based application, for twitter. I'd become fond of this product, but I couldn't seem to find an install for Linux. I raised a question on twitter and @aqualung came up with the solution. Adobe had an Alpha version of the product for Linux. Downloaded and setup the Linux version and then proceeded to install twhirl. It worked, I was now happy to hear those little beeps again.

This was completed on 3rd May 2008, I raised it on twitter that I was going Microsoft Free. Of course there was someone, @NickHodge who responded that they would try and be the opposite. Just for information, I questioned him a day later and he was not able to work exclusively with Microsoft software.

I was very surprised with the improvements in Open Office and have been able to perform all activities necessary with it for a full work week, two weeks straight. I love the ability to be able to produce a PDF from within it. One thing that I would have liked was integration with WebSphere Portal - PDM (Portal Document Manager) and Open Office/Nautilus File Manager. IBM is this going to be available in the next version of WebSphere Portal?

Working virtual, I need to be able to pick up my work environment and go on-premise on the odd occasion. Either for consulting work or to give a presentation. So I wanted to get a new notebook. What was I going to do? Buy a standard notebook with Windows Vista installed or look at an Apple Mac Book Pro?

It would be a big commitment going down the Apple path, but I knew if I absolutely needed to I could also run the Windows operating systems through either Parallels or VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X. So I thought, well lets go get some pricing for a Mac Book Pro. (wow uncanny, as I'm writing this, the Apple commercial - PC vs Mac just came on the TV - Prime Time).

I've ordered a 17" Mac Book Pro with the higher resolution screen, 4 GB of memory and the 7200 RPM 200GB hard drive (got a good price). I've also purchased the Apple Time Capsule, which acts as a back up drive and a WiFi router.  Information on your notebook is so valuable, and this in conjunction with the Time Machine capability of Mac OS X, seemed to address the worry that crossed my mind previously.

Through my investigations into who is using Mac OS X based machines, I have found that within certain circles of associates, that I know, I will be the last person to acquire a Mac Book Pro. Now this surprised me, as normally I try and be at the leading edge. I'm not normally known as being a laggard.

Did I fire up the Windows XP Notebook over the last couple of weeks and use it through the external monitor? Yes, a couple of times, to retrieve some data that I had not copied off and also to gather some user ids and passwords for some sites stored in Mozilla Firefox. However, I performed the actual work activity on the Linux machine.

So after two weeks, I have been able to work without Microsoft software to perform my normal business activities. I've had some teething problems, but have always been able to solve the problem myself or gain assistance to find a resolution.

I'm looking forward to using the Mac OS X on the Mac Book Pro, it should be a little more productive then the OpenSuSE Linux Desktop. Next status report will be on my experiences with Apple.

Tags status+report microsoft productivity apple work linux   |  Comments 3

Cutting back on email

By Nick Hortovanyi

There are a lot of people I know that are bombarded with email and for many of them it has become one of those dreaded daily chores. It is even worse when left unchecked for a period of time. I've heard a new term that aptly describes this phenomenon as "Email Jail".

Luis Suarez, a Social Software Evangelist from IBM, has been actively experimenting on "Giving up on Work e-mail". His status report for Week 4 makes for a very interesting read. I've been communicating with him through twitter on this subject and he still receives email but then actively encourages conversation through other means and tools.

About a year ago,  I wrote about email, in a blog entry titled "Email that's what I use to talk to my Grandfather" inferring that the newer generations entering the workforce, or indeed currently working in it, expect more modern tools for communicating then just emails. Invariable, they use other tools to communicate to their friends and associates but revert to email to communicate to their older relatives. A year on I've seen a steady rise in the usage of sites like facebook from within the confines of the corporate work environment. Some organisations have embraced these off-premise communication means and some have blocked them. But for both, email is an issue. The availability of which now has a critical impact on daily operations.

We actively use Lotus Sametime for our daily work, Alex has written up a blog entry on his experiences with it. This enables us to minimise our email usage, to really offline communication (Offline Sametime would be good IBM) or to information that we need to send external to other organisations. Everybody I show Sametime to, is impressed with it as we can also share screens (take control of other screens), use white boards and quickly capture screen shots and snippets in a conversation to expand meaning.

Now we are also experimenting with a wiki server for public and offline "walled garden" communication and it is open to others, who register, to collaborate on content with us. More on this later in another blog entry, as I see this as being an ongoing exercise.

For us, we lose productivity if our Lotus Sametime services is not available, thus it would be more critical for us to have that facility operational than email.

So if you are stuck in "Email Jail" the first step is to acknowledge it and the second step is to find other means to communicate. Even picking the phone up can be an escape (we'd prefer to use a VOIP service like Skype over traditional  landlines).

Tags sametime communication email productivity community wiki email+jail skype   |  Comments 2