Happy deadline day

In an act of supreme (really?) irony, though I’m never sure what that is nowadays and after all my complaining - which I so enjoyed - at Apple’s culpability in something or other, I received an iPod Touch for Christmas. It’s not quite the latest model so I estimate three years from now I’ll find I’m repeating myself; as Apple themselves might say, three years seems like an awfully long time....

I have been busy in general but particularly this week. My now ex-development partner left for pastures new, which in addition to being a surprise was a real shame since he was great to work with. The job itself continues to inspire, overload and a whole set of other adjectives that add up to scary fun. I am at that place where several things have begun to properly click, yet in addition to ‘getting it’ I’m aware of just how much there is still to get; I like the challenge. So with unexpected news I found myself staying overnight at the north-end of the country, running through a few of those things I still didn’t get, fitting in a meeting or two before travelling home and having to stop - for I was knackered - on both the M6 and M5 for extra-shot coffee.

The following morning I was tired with a full day and faced with deadlines that had nothing to do with work. Football, blog - so that I’d have something to show for January (I needn’t say how that went) and to fill in my tax return. Aforementioned work meant leaving this to the very last day, something it seems I did last year though I can’t recall last year’s excuse. This time however I’ll fill in that form or dial that number and try to opt out of the nightmare that is wondering where you’ve put your P60. And this time, this time I mean it (© 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 etc.)

Continuing adventures

I’ve not been too productive when it comes to writing, but then I have an excuse; not so long ago, I started a new job. As befits a new job, at least one worth sticking with, there’s a level of tiredness from taking in all that’s new; that’s the attraction. A new language, a new subsystem for building the UI, a new model design pattern, it’s all good. Mind you the office is 170 miles away, which is why I work from home with an occasional one-day visit; that’s a long day; up before 5am, back home as late as 8pm. So the reading has faltered too.

I was on a roll; The Sense of An Ending, Waterland, The Mayor of Casterbridge and A Tale of Two Cities to name a few. I’ve started the long run-on sentences of All The Pretty Horses – thankfully I’m used to McCarthy’s play-by-his-own-rules punctuation - but it’s had to wait until a short break this week to give it its due. Before then, instead of useful activities such as practicing how to read and write, I found myself perturbed by the recent events in Emmerdale. How did their first ever music festival make a £0.5 million profit on those crowds? Oh, and somebody else was murdered. It’s enough to have you lying awake at night wondering whether the alphabet can be re-produced in a semi-recognisable format using only nine pixels; some companies spend millions producing ‘retina displays’ but I like to ‘think outside the box’. It must be the long hours.

The 110%'ers

I put it down to poor use of a thesaurus; desire begot passion, and passion won out over professionalism, which suffered through being less easy to fake and having too many syllables. But who am I to talk? Two comments annoyed me last week; quite why I’ve been so irritable or these particular remarks I don’t know, they’re hardly the silliest. I’m beginning to think I have a specific dislike for good points badly made, or good subjects undercut by an over-the-top zeal.

Why are so many businesses down on discussion with emotion and passion? Gotta harness them and focus on a good final outcome.

This is easy to answer; they’re not. Are you one of those people who whoop and holler when the audio engineer checks the microphone, or is it the result of hearing something really good? Yes, I know this analogy is shaky, but the point I’m trying to make, badly, is quality, commitment, a clear vision, and so on, will result in those other signals that indicate success. There’s nothing quite so dispiriting for some as enforced jollity, the ‘spontaneous’ applause at the end of every stand-up. It’s cyclical, you don’t create good product by getting excited about it, you get excited at the prospect of creating good product, and this requires those old fashioned virtues we seemingly only whisper. Then there was this:

If you’re not outside your comfort zone, you’re doing it wrong.

No, no, no; you’re trying too hard - change the word “not” to “never” and I’d be a lot more... erm... you know, though not that much. I’ve had enough of these false prophets, those 110%’ers who’d have us believe that anything less is to fail. This particular example might not seem so bad on reflection, yet it is, tending to an authoritarian school that inflicts us all; I’m always tempted to respond “is this evidence based?” because such slippery-worded nonsense defies proof. Imagine the reaction to “I’m not very comfortable with this new release but, hey, you know what they say.” What the comment should be trying to convey is the advantage in stepping outside your comfort zone every so often, pushing the envelope occasionally or whatever cliché floats your boat, challenging commonly held assumptions; which is a little different from permanently living on the edge. False dilemmas such as the one above lead to a suspicion their purpose is more self-validation than advice.

Don’t light my fuse

In the fabulously funny (I may be overselling it) Mystery Men, the hapless heroes are brought together by the shadowy Sphinx; scrum master by day, crime fighter by night, a figure whose aphorisms inspire his team to save the city from Prince Practitioners. Judge for yourself:

He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
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To summon your power for the conflict to come, you must first have power over that which conflicts you.
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When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

I’m psyched. I’m exaggerating. The Sphinx, as far as I’m aware, isn’t an Agile consultant; though sometimes my Twitter feed suggests he could be. A 140 character per-post social networking service does tend to encourage brevity, tending to meaningless. It’s harmless enough, and within all the chaff there’s an occasional nugget. It is - and I wish I didn’t feel the need to say this - in no way indicative of the worth of this set of development methods, as Twitter is in no way indicative of the worth of anything. It makes me smile, if not always in the way intended. Sometimes it makes me frown:

Legacy maintenance is nothing but a pay-cheque. Sustaining a healthy, talented team of engineers in that arid environment is impossible.

Now there’s a statement that troubles in a multitude of ways, it’s a dead-end, a mixture of obvious, worthless and insulting. “Obvious” because we learn nothing in being told certain tasks aren’t that enjoyable; you might as well comment children are our future and fun things are... erm... fun. “Worthless” as one definition for legacy is any live software (I read that on Twitter!) and therefore most projects would require, bar the first iteration, some level of “legacy maintenance” - how do we live with ourselves? “Insulting” since telling those who do such work they’re only in it for the money, and (unintentionally?) insinuating they have no ability, isn’t very helpful. It doesn't progress the subject. It’s also bollocks. It’s a cul-de-sac of thought; at worst a “talented people don’t do these kind of jobs”, at best a “some jobs are more enjoyable than others”; well, you don’t say, but they still need to be done. Just what kind of world do we seek; one that would ghettoise certain types of work, or one where all can contribute, and all contributions are valued?

Enough with the passion!

They should have shown more passion, thus spoke the commentator and the various studio heads nodded in agreement. A simple diagnosis adopted by the press because passion is something we all understand, but since when did simple and the truth become such easy bedfellows? I’m pretty sure England’s failure to win the World Cup in my lifetime isn’t down to a lack of enthusiasm. Likewise I don’t think those who succeeded did so because they wanted it more.

These truths are self-evident, yet we persist in this nonsense. Popular culture - for example, cookery competitions - place a passion for what you’re doing ahead of knowing what you’re doing. Worse, far worse, this silliness has infiltrated our work. This is not to denigrate enthusiasm; it’s to challenge the idea that enthusiasm is a pre-requisite to doing good work. I don’t mean ‘good’ in its technical sense, more that definition alluding to professionalism and a strong ethic; sometimes I love my work, sometimes it drives me to despair, always I give my best. The notion we’ll only ever work on what interests us is absurd, so why suggest otherwise, and what use is someone who saves their best for those projects using the latest technology? I’ve worked with a developer who lived and breathed ‘the craft’ - I imagined shelves at home lined with books about coding, and their work when using the newest framework was often brilliant, but we also had a number of legacy applications, you can guess the rest.

Contributing to open source projects, writing a technical blog and all that other stuff is cool, doing anything you enjoy is really cool, but as in any way of life, when we start to think of what makes us happy and productive as the template for others, we should take a step back. Hence my appreciation for the tongue-in-cheek 501 developer manifesto, it’s a long overdue correction to those who have looked pejoratively at others with a different method. Yes, it’s a little bit rude and some humourless types have taken exception, but if you’re going to ‘pity’ anyone you ‘pity’ those on the pedestal because ... that’s how a joke works.

Backward

A kind of existential week; not entirely successful and culminating with the suspect use of “existential” - a dodgy definition formed as a teenager when required by my English teacher to read Sartre. He was always good for a laugh - the teacher that is - some vague notion that it wasn’t so much what you were doing - or even why - more that you were doing something. Thirty years later and with the knowledge that English wasn’t my strongest subject, it allows for last week; something was getting done, but it’s best not to concentrate on direction.

I spent an appalling amount of time working on an application I knew nothing about, tracking down an error, trying out various theories and somewhat bemused to find the developer of some of the underlying database procedures was yours truly. I switched to some unit testing, which I hadn’t forgotten, and in an act of solidarity managed to break that too. The COM+ elements weren’t working so I thought I’d check the application upon which they were based - to find it failing in a different way. A re-install required uninstalling first, uninstalling produced an error; and the windows installer and clean-up utility had been retired by Microsoft to be replaced by something with a much nicer interface that didn’t do the job. On finding the old utility, the install that followed failed with complaints about the registry. Something was getting done...

Genius and Madman was the sub-heading to a Bobby Fischer biography on the BBC. I confess I did feel sorry for Fischer; in particular at a press conference where, having been granted Icelandic citizenship, he was silent for a moment as if aware of what he’d become. I’m not sure what heading I could apply to the woman on the tram whose racist ranting was captured and duly posted to YouTube. On reflection, I wondered if genius was all that separated the two. Fischer came across as an unpleasant individual even before the descent that followed his victory in 1972. Was his anti-Semitism a symptom of his madness, or his madness a vent for his anti-Semitism? The documentary suggested the former, further reading suggests the latter.

Six thousand dollars? It's not even leather!

On second thoughts, £350 for a web browser? It doesn’t even have an optical drive! Out of curiosity I shall persist with the challenge of web-only use on my home machine, though since all this means is giving up Microsoft Office... well, I think I can manage that. I have greater challenges ahead. On Monday I have to correct the disaster that was Friday, where I managed to live my life backwards; now, nothing works. Nothing on my virtual desktop; my old fashioned right-in-front-of me desktop (though since I was working from home, I had remote access to that too) carries on regardless, whereas its replacement can’t even finish installing a service pack before rebooting.

Courtesy of BBC iPlayer, Saturday was better. Rubicon, which has occasionally threatened the fate of a shaggy dog story, defied my expectations and delivered the best episode yet. Will’s private investigation into his boss and the shady company Atlas McDowell, is dovetailing nicely into his team’s search for terrorist mastermind Kateb. It’s a throwback to those conspiracy films from the seventies, such as The Parallax View and Winter Kills; that sense of an individual’s hopeless stand against the tide, overwhelmed by events.

I could say the same for the best drama of the year, The Shadow Line; of which - save for an unnecessary salute at the end - I don’t think there was a duff moment in the whole series. What impressed with the final episode was how, even with the nature of the conspiracy revealed to Jonah Gabriel early on, I wasn’t sure how it would be resolved. I didn’t see it coming, though I really should have; the scene where Joseph Bede, played by Christopher Eccleston, leaves his house and stops momentarily when he sees his car waiting for him, was perfect. He knew.

Follow up some excellent television with some equally good films in Sin Hombre and There Will Be Blood, and the result is a quality weekend... albeit a bit grim. I’ll need a week or more of Pixar to restore the balance. And it would help if I could get my machine to work.

The house of mirth

It's performance appraisal time and social convention requires you re-acquaint yourself with the company mantra:

Those who shout the loudest have the most to gain.

Of course that's not entirely fair, but then neither is making you fill in this form. Luckily you stumbled into contract work for several years and were able to opt out of such torture, resisting attempts of well-meaning managers to drag you back in; now however you’re a permanent participant of this divine comedy. The problem being that once an organisation reaches a certain size, the forms start to cater for the lowest common denominator, bloat with unnecessary detail and punish those who already have a strong work ethic. It's difficult to maintain a sense of individuality; especially when you reach the page containing a table of verbs and adjectives "you might want to use".

OK, so they're not that bad, but I am ambivalent. A formal appraisal can feel an admission of failure when continuous informal is the aim, where a well-run company has the least to gain and an ill-run company the most. It is at best an aide memoir for good management, not a requirement.

There and back again

My penultimate working day of the year was a drive to the office, followed by some documentation and then, once it was obvious the snow was going to be a problem, an early and very slow drive home again. There was a moment when I reached 30mph on the one clear-ish lane on the motorway - whoosh!

Ending the week

I’m tired. I’ve spent the home part of my week adapting to the school run, housework, cooking the dinner and trying to watch re-runs of Star Trek: DS9. I’ve spent the work part of my week grappling with legacy code, though in the absence of an environment in which to ask questions or generate ideas it’s a solitary experience. That’s not a criticism, merely acknowledging the realities of working in such a small office. It’s not dissimilar to my first job in which I spent six years with ever-decreasing staff numbers before deciding to take a peek at the world outside. This time we are at least connected, you and I, though whether we’ll ever understand each other. The internet brings us together and emphasises the distance between, provides answers and a constant reminder of how little I know.

So I looked forward to the supporting act to this weekend’s firework displays. Little Miss R and I forsook the car and umbrellas and instead took a short walk to watch a quick display of very loud bangs and dazzling colour. It tipped down. We had a lot of fun.

‘Tis the season for mucus and mucous

I was laid low for a second time last Thursday so I should be full of antibodies – nothing can overcome me now! On this occasion it was a nasty cold; the following day I went in only to feel crap sat at my desk. On balance it was the right thing to do as I got a bit of work done and I don’t think I was contagious, but I did wonder whether the cost to British business from people ‘taking a sickie’ - often estimated in the billions each year - might be matched by the cost of sick people coming into work when they should have stayed at home. I’m pretty sure of having ‘taken out’ a few colleagues myself in this manner.

My road to recovery was aided yesterday by the heroic Harriet Harman who, put out by Polly Toynbee’s tilt at the title, decided to grab some of the glory by taking a swing at Danny Alexander. I’m guessing the message from the dear leader on being serious about politics doesn’t apply to party get-togethers though it makes you wonder when it does apply. ‘Ginger rodent’ is hardly the nastiest thing I’ve heard (Nye Bevan referred to the Conservatives as ‘vermin’) but as with all insults it’s counterproductive, there is no progression of ideas and it raises the thorny issue of when is it ever acceptable to prefix an insult with a reference to the person’s appearance. I’m pretty sure of being guilty of this too but just in case you’re wondering Harriet, the answer is NEVER!

Terminator versus work colleague

It says much about my day that when I described someone as “like the Terminator” and then added “a psychopathic killing machine”, I subsequently spent several minutes analysing why that was the wrong thing to say.

Then I realised it’s because the Terminator isn’t a psychopath. A psychopath has an abnormal lack of empathy whereas a lack of understanding is de rigueur for your average T-800. Besides being more impressed than I should be for writing ‘de rigueur’ in a discourse on the true nature of cybernetic organisms, it got me to thinking again about the nature of evil itself. Which is worse – doing a bad thing and knowing it’s wrong or doing an evil thing and not knowing? Or is evil defined by an understanding that what is being done is wrong and not caring? Or are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hollow constructs we place on what is an essentially meaningless world?

I started this train of thought whilst watching Terminator Salvation, starring the very angry Christian Bale. I liked the acknowledgement to its predecessors – “come with me if you want to live” and even the traditional “I’ll be back” – though I groaned at the old “if we act like them then we’re no better than machines” chestnut. It was probably about that time my mind wandered to the other films and how I’d never really rated Judgement Day, also known as “Cool, my own terminator”, and how Rise of the Machines was so much better (I really mean that) and Nick Stahl, who played John Conner in that film, also played the boy in The Man Without a Face and that must mean that Mel Gibson is really old now and maybe that’s why he’s so angry. It’s a fear of death.

Happy slapped by the database

I had a good day yesterday - I managed to get two, maybe even three things working! I could see a hazy distant light only for it to cloud over today; not even a chorizo sausage baguette could cheer me up. The change request database stopped working for no apparent reason and then after lunch started to behave itself - again for no apparent reason. It vexes me greatly. I am making progress but it is slow. I have a holiday soon. I am looking forward to it.

A fun holiday might stop mistakes such as letting my daughter watch the The IT crowd on replay. It was the best episode of the recent and occasionally misfiring series; Italian for Beginners. Roy has a new girlfriend and learns that her parents died in a tragic fire at a "Sea Parks" during a sea lion show. Unfortunately the line that made me laugh the loudest was Roy’s explanation when his girlfriend walks in whilst he’s checking out her story on the internet. Cue one of those awkward pauses whilst I grapple for an answer to my daughter's inevitable question.

Send in the clown

Many years ago I found myself looking at a performance issue with a new version of software. Re-written from the ground up and in a newer version of the language, it was running much slower than the component it replaced. It turned out the problem wasn't the code but the interaction between the client and server process. With only a single thread of execution (it was that long ago) a disproportionate amount of time was spent with the client requesting and the server providing 'progress updates'. The change from significantly slower to significantly faster performance was achieved with the alteration of a single line; the client process would request a 'progress update' once every five seconds, rather than 20 times every second.

Over a dozen years later and I'm at it again, only this time I'm the 'single thread of execution' and the numerous task reminders popping up on my screen are the work I'm keeping in the air whilst I carefully inch forward; either that or an elaborate April fool. I feel a circus act, not entirely sure why, but certain I must.

Out, damned report

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, though since I can’t remember any good bits I’d take that with a pinch of salt. I am so tired and I can’t decide whether it’s due to a lack of sleep or working on reports, or a lack of sleep due to working on reports. I do know I don’t want another week like that, but since I’ve not yet finished there’s every chance I will. Regression testing will prove even more painful since there’s work on systems of which I have even less or no knowledge - but then neither does anyone else. On one report I removed an entire list of recipient addresses, people involved in the development, people who have all been made redundant. My address is on there now but for how long?

So I would be well advised to make the most of the weekend. However my hope of watching Wings of Desire, years after getting the DVD, has failed to materialise. Saturday afternoon was my chance and I’m realistic enough to know how the evening will turn out. You see that sad grey haired man sunk on the sofa, brain barely active (it’s for the best) whilst watching Casualty on BBC One? That’s me that is, that’s my future.

Do developers dream of agile sheep?

Circumstances being what they are I’m currently working in a very small team. That would be the team of one, starring Chuck Norris. There are some advantages, besides the ability to fight off terrorists with my bare hands, such as worrying less about reviews whilst maintaining quality. I still review; it was the memory of past conflicts that always had me worried. I’ve been lucky to have worked with some personable people for several years, thus the process was relatively untroubled, but have been around long enough to remember a few toxic environments; where failure was less an opportunity to learn and more a chance for one-upmanship and the establishment of hierarchy.

Somewhat behind the curve I’ve been thinking a lot about Agile, this despite the mention of daily stand-ups. I didn’t pay much attention to this element at first but recently it’s occurred to me that far from being a euphemism there are probably some who interpret this literally – who require it. Having no first hand experience I’m ill-placed to comment, but who’d have thought keeping a meeting on-point would require something so prescriptive? Certainly not me; anyone who’s been in a meeting with sales knows that standing up won’t help… though running away might.

However I’m still fascinated, I always liked rapid application development. It’s the potential of seeing it done well that grabs the imagination; to interact with others on a regular basis with constructive comment given and taken, driving the project forward, continually improving the outcome. Only I’m not sure how the more ‘robust’ personalities are encouraged to value others as much as they value themselves. Perhaps this isn’t in the remit; yet I’ve read a blog or two that hint at the possibility. Wouldn’t it be great if a methodology enabled better product and better people? Or should I just go and hug a tree?

I can see clearly now

Some time ago my old CRT television faded away and I ordered a new HD TV and Blu Ray player. I’d been waiting for an excuse, though my old friend rallied briefly before being switched off and dragged to the garage; where it will remain because it’s too heavy to carry any further. With my new boxes of delight I attempt to discern the difference between a standard and high definition picture; there is one, but it’s quite distracting looking for it. Now I’m in a no-mans land of indecision trying to decide between lovely cheap up-scaled DVDs and their “improved” Blu Ray counterpart.

It’s a perfect diversion from the real world which likewise seems undecided on what to do with me. That’s bollocks of course, though I do seem to be waiting for something; after which I will presumably move forward with my life. Meanwhile I put my head down and plough through the work ahead whilst wryly noting how much longer everything takes, longer than even I expected, when there are so few people around.

It’s proving a good opportunity to look at things that might otherwise have passed me by and I’m enjoying, if that’s the right word, the challenge; but it is very tiring. I miss bouncing ideas around, random Star Wars quotes, overhearing in-character discussions on the latest Xbox game, 5-a-side football, complaining to my boss, spoiler discussions on 24, arguing over whose turn it is to make the coffee. I miss my friends.

Not waving

Some bad habits you never grow out of. Such as wanting something, not being sure why you want it, and then not being sure what to do with it once you’ve got it. Such is the case with Google Wave. I logged in, changed my profile picture and… logged back out again. The thing is I don’t have the time to invest and I can’t really think of anything to communicate. I do at least have one contact, that’d be the wannabe writer, the one who deserted me to go and do something more worthwhile instead and who it turns out can write a good tale. Perhaps he could make it up to me by collaborating on a way to hold back time so I can become only slightly adrift.

I am so far behind schedule; the number of constantly snoozed reminders has reached double figures, I see red flags all over Outlook and I’ve been off work ill. I still feel like crap. I’ll feel worse I’m sure when I run through my e-mail. For some light entertainment I may start the day by comparing the mail requiring me to complete my compliance training (ethics and some such) with that explaining the consequences of failing to adhere to the change request process as documented on the company SharePoint. One was undoubtedly from an external service provided to the company… one managed a firm yet friendly warning of what was required… and the other threatened the recipient with termination. Well you’ve got to laugh. At least that’s the rumour…

Lies, damned lies

I’m spending a little too much time ‘task switching’ as opposed to ‘task doing’, but I suppose it’s better to be too busy. I like busy. Being able to see the value in your work helps, but it's not that way for everyone.

I have a developer friend who was once tasked with consulting and updating reports for another department of his company. It was all for a good cause, to determine their internal efficiency. Unfortunately it turned out the department had been taking the term ‘internal’ all too literally and, as if unaware of the outside world, managed to cut the customer out of the equation. Imagine your job is to take data from a customer, manually process the data and then hand it back. Not surprisingly the company want to know how efficient that process is. But the department doesn’t have the tools to record the time taken for data coming in, processed and returned to the customer on the same day; it does however have a tool that records the amount of data waiting to be processed that came in on a specified day.

Oh dear. The department reasoned there was no cost to queuing data coming in and queuing data going out, no internal cost anyway. Hence there was no need to ask for any engineering resource. When the company asked how long it took to process an item they may have meant ‘how long until the customer gets their data back’, but what they got was an answer to an entirely different question. How many customers did they lose? We’ll never know; my friend doesn’t work there any more. Very few people do.

All of this has happened before

So the hurricane came and went leaving a trail of devastation in its wake... completely untrue but I rather like the way that sounds. It was nothing personal; it was business though it still hurts. The axe fell in an unexpected quarter, the sales department... as you’d expect, I’m devastated. I’d almost convinced myself that this time, this one time, it really was going to be a ‘state of play’ visit; you’d think by now I’d know better.

Some cynics may suggest the loss of a sales department is no big deal, it’s karma for a lack of investment in product, but one thing is definite; if you don’t have sales people then you don’t have anything to sell. I figured that one out myself. The other clue was when the boss said “we’re not selling that anymore”.

It’s safe to say the patient is on life support and with no hope of recovery. We think he stands a chance of making it into the New Year but the prognosis beyond then is certain. Meanwhile I’ve entered a bizarre alternate reality in which I genuinely like the sales people who survive. Me and sales; who’d have thought it possible?

Since I’m old enough to have seen it all before and wise enough (don’t laugh) to not take it personally, I get on with what work there is; though having said that, due to staff shortages I’m making very little progress. I’ll probably get fired for that. I blame it on my friend and ex-colleague, the artist wannabe, who up and quit work the other week to pursue something worthwhile, rather than wallow in a collective doom and see it through to our inevitable and bitter end. Fucking writers, eh?