Tag: software development

I’m sitting here, in front of the latop, Saturday afternoon is slowing fading away. My bottle of Bundaberg Ginger Beer (Diet, whoot) is empty.

What to write about?

A faint whine starts, fizzing slightly. The bottle is empty, but I bring it up to my ear, and sure enough, there’s some of those wonderful gingery bubbles escaping.

And it takes me back to a time, not so long ago, when I used to write on the blog a lot more than I did now. I used to write most every day, and come up with some zany crazy and cool ideas about development. Lately said posts have been fewer, and farther between.

I’d say though, that it’s a seasonal thing, like the tides (seasonal?). I’ll come round again to posting a lot, it’s just I’ve settled into a groove at the moment, and it fits.

Anyway, back to the bottle.

Straight away I thought .. Why don’t we program carbonated water into our programs?

Then I thought, what the bewhillikers does that mean?

Now I’m trying to come up with an answer while writing this post. Ha ha.

What’s the purpose of carbonation? To give the drink "Fizz", which as I discovered on wikipedia, is

.. is an example of onomatopoeia, derived from the sound the multiple bubbles make together as they "pop" when they escape.

People like fizz. We know this. Without the drink itself, fizz wouldn’t be much at all. Who really likes fizzy mineral water (apart from pregnant wives who hunger for it for weeks, then suddenly cannot stand the sight of it, heh heh)?

So we have the drink. And we have the fizz.

We have our application. And we have fizz.

The fizz, in our year of 2006 and on into next year no doubt, is .. Web 2.0. It’s Ajax (still). RSS, Blogging, Wikipedia, Youtube, Myspace. It’s whatever makes people pay attention, sit up, invest money, and want to know about. It’s the hollywood of technology. The Hollyology if you will. Or the technowood (hmmm). And I reckon we need to put a little more time into jumping onto the bandwagon than staying true and pure and never listening to what direction the world at large is taking.

This means, spending an hour to think about how RSS to could be implemented into your system, to add the FIZZ that the extra percentage of people will grab a hold of. How could you morph a little of the YouTube hype, channel a little of the stupidly huge river of popularity into your own development.

I’m excited about the development world at the moment. Probably more excited than ever. We have the tools, we need the nous.

The bottle still hasn’t stopped fizzing away. Certainly, I love my non-alchoholic (less than 0.twentythreethousandth percent or something) bunderburg diet ginger beer. It’s awesome to the max.

Fizz Away People!

p.s. It’s (kind of, if you don’t count the comic posts) the 300th post! Celebrations ensue ..

Last night I spent some time working on the design of my new logistics system. I’m developing from the ground up.

One question that I couldn’t easily break open was this .. What the point of an update screen?

Now, that flies in the face of the typical Browse/Update paradigm. At least, it seems to.

What’s the point of an update screen?

I would think, it’s so the user can do two things.

1. Insert/Change/Delete a record (the Delete doesn’t really fall in here)

and,

2. View the Information.

The browse should account for 2. at least a little bit. The more relevant information you have on a browse, the less the user has to go into the update screen just to check on something.

But number one, 1., can be dealt with, at least in some respects, in other ways.

The specific method I’m thinking of is the Right-Click.

A while back Bill showed me the power of the right-click inside a system, and consequently added it into my brain as another "way to get things done".

—

I’ve had another couple of days to ponder this. A great deal of info gathering will fall on the hands of the browse. Further, many of the methods we traditionally put into the update screen (child records, assignments, linking) can happen via right-click.

The update screen still has it’s uses. Particularly for straight-forward (what people expect) data entry, and information gathering of obtuse little fields that rarely are needed.

That’s my general thoughts on the matter, right or wrong.

Since last Thursday, I’ve had a wonderful chaotic experience.

My first format and reinstall on this laptop.

She now purrs along a fair bit faster than before that terrible day when certain registry errors started appearing.

So for two days I copied the contents of the harddrive and then reinstalled windows (twice, because the first time I didn’t use my dell cd).

Have spent the last couple of days (and still am) getting back to my dev environment. It’s amazing just what I had grown used to. I’m going to blog the tools one day. A list of them.

A good little nugget to come out of them was that I knocked up a password keeper system. Very simple. A browse of the records. Each record has a Type Detail and the Password.

Edit :: Just realised .. not enough info for the Website Type. You’d need to know username as well. This is mostly for logging into cms backend.

It’s easy. Quick. I’m sick of losing all the passwords I have around the place. Now they are centralised.

Nothing much more at the moment. Still got a mountain of stuff to get through. Work. Work. More work.

Cheers,

Was reading this very interesting article (SlashDot) on the demise of TechTV, and came across this Wikipedia reference to Big Rigs.

Now, you read through that page and try not to laugh out loud. It’s awesome. So much the stuff of folklore.

I consider myself a gamer, but shamefully, today is the first i’ve heard of this game, which has achieved cult status. That’s pretty cool. It’s got it’s own religion. The Rigism message board is where most of this action can be found.

Now. The Development slant to this .. hmmm ..

If something so bad gains a cult following, perhaps .. If we know our product is not going to achieve the heights of massive success (whether from good design, massive marketing, great coding, or any mix), then perhaps we should not go for mediocrity, but plunge to the depths of LOSER-ness.

Create something so bad that it’s good. Come up with "YOU’RE WINNER" functionality.

Now, I’m not talking about newb-first-time-coding-clarion bad, or even i-can’t-design-a-database bad. It’s gotta suck so much, that it opposes any and all of the points it set out to win at.

For example, an Accounting System that cannot make any mathematical calculations, but just randomises a value. The windows to enter ciritical data have no entries on them. Reports have to be run before entering data. Nothing is saved.

Actually, this is harder than I first thought. Needs some better understanding of what constitutes as so bad it’s good.

Cheers,

I’ve spoken about this topic before, probably at length, so if you are bored please venture into another of my self-deluded ramblings of grandeur.

Anyway.

Last night I was struck again with how much our dreams can differ from reality. Except this time the lesson hit he over the head with far greater clarity.

One of the best skills in development (learned & innate) is to be able to dream with reality.

Corny I know. But true.

1. You cannot build a dream without reality.

How many times have I launched into a project that in my mind looks so awesome, and then a few days later it drops away into the recesses of memory? More than I remember.

It’s so important when considering what we do that reality plays a healthy part. No doubt I’m preaching to the converted, as I think it’s probably something that’s learnt very early on in the piece. Although I guess if you work in a massive development team, then perhaps it’s something that isn’t an issue. Not sure. Depends on your role I would imagine.

You cannot build an accounting system knowing nothing about accounting. Been there, massively failed that.

Having an idea for a book/tv show/movie/comic, having real characters in your mind, a story that you think is pretty awesome, with a massive twist at the end, doesn’t mean squat. Been there many times. Have a bunch of single-page word documents to prove it.

Thinking I can still (mentioned this one before for sure) play for the Wallabies (or at least the Waratahs), dreaming of the tackles, the ball runs, the rapturous applause of the crowd and the accolades of team-mates .. doesn’t measure up to the reality of an un-skilled broken body.

I think you get my drift.

But wait, there’s more. Actually, no .. there is hope. Great hope.

2. Reality is half the journey.

As important as reality is, you still need to dream. It’s the balance. Even if it’s someone else in the team doing the dreaming, that’s okay.

I’m a dreamer. For sure. But I believe I can get to the stage where my understanding of reality is as alive as my dreams. It’s getting there. I’m more aware of the pitfalls of launching into new projects. I work with a bunch of devs that have a lot of experience with the reality of dreaming.

So don’t stop dreaming. I’m not going to. But I’m striving every day to better my vision (super-power). My clarity and understanding.

Which leads to the third, I guess conclusion point.

3. Dreams aren’t really going to dry up.

I have to be prepared to let dreams go. That’s just the reality of the situation. It might be putting them on the shelf, or just completely canning it.

And you know what? It don’t matter. There’s plenty of stuff gurgling away in my brain all the time. Ideas come and go, it’s the character behind, the breeding ground, that allows them to form .. not the objects in and of themselves. At least, that’s what i reckon. It’s not that you’ll never have another good idea again, because you shouldn’t be thinking that thought in the first place.

It’s like when one of my ideas gets shot down by someone else. Of course, I feel like I’ve been hit with a 2by4 with nails in it (ha ha), but after the momentary pain, I laugh. It’s good. It makes my next dream/idea a little better, thinking about how to form it in a way that answers the critical skills others have, and I am growing.

Anyway. Getting long-winded.

You know what I’m talking bout.

Cheers,