Protos’ Musings

“Most programmers have only a vague notion of how competent they are at what they do for a living” — Steve Yegge

“Experience comes from practice” — Andy Hunt

I thought I was done and dusted having wrote that previous redux post about how to be a better programmer. But my good friend Subru had posted a comment that made me (as it does most of the time) take notice and do some thinking and research about the importance of study and practice in the career of programmers. I did that since it has a direct impact on the topic I have been harping about — the talent of the programmers like me, or the lack of it.

Subru had wrote that reading a few books need not necessarily make you better. He said that observing and interacting with senior craftsmen would make you a better programmer. It is precisely this attitude and observation that I wanted to do some thinking about. I, based on my personal experience, believe that it is better to read the books than observing the masters. The reason being that you never know whether the maestro is actually doing the right thing or more importantly, it is the right thing for you at the stage or phase of your learning or career.  Plus, what if the meastro hasn’t read anything in the recent past and so is not in touch with the latest developments in the field?

I had this doubt, nay, conviction, partly because I had the good fortune of reading about Shu Ha Ri which was an appendix of the great Alistair Cockburn book Agile Software Development: the Co-operative Game, and partly because I believe Subru was wrong about the books. Shu Ha Ri teaches you that a beginner (the Shu phase) needs a framework or a rigid set of rules to follow, plus constant feedback to get through the initial learning phase. In the intermediate level (the Ha phase) one masters the rules, and learns all the tricks of the trade. In the advanced phase (the Ri phase) one needs to actually forget the rules or transcend the rules and make one’s own rules of the game.

Ok, so what am I harping about here? Well, just the fact that with practice anyone (who is not physically or mentally invalidated to even attempt the task at hand) can move from being a novice to a master. All it takes is dedication and some knowledge of how to travel the path of mastery. I am not saying this. Hear it in Kathy Sierra’s (of the Head First Java and Head First Design Patterns fame) words here. Having experienced first hand how Apple and myself could actually become far better programmers than what we were when we started out, I can vouch for it. I am not talking about the linear progression in talent that people who don’t read books enjoy. In our case, the progression was non-linear, if not exponential, and it was made possible by the simple fact that we studied (read) and we practiced what we studied — him probably more than me.

In fact some of the best minds in our industry believe what Kathy was conveying passionately. Steve Yeggey, one of the best bloggers I have read, has analyzed this topic in-depth, and later came up with an article titled “Practicing Programming” for people like you and me (the average programmer) to reflect upon and work upon to becoming a better programmer. He wrote both the articles a few years back when he was still with Amazon, and now he is with Google. 

He writes in the first essay:

Bob (our average programmer) knows this guy Joe who’s just amazing. Joe’s like the best programmer Bob’s ever known…He’s a natural at it. One of them whiz kids…

In Bob’s view of the world, there are essentially three programmer skill levels: folks learning how to program, folks like Bob who know how to program, and the inevitable whizzes, but they’re few and far between. There are always a few whizzes out there, the ones who used to be child geniuses or whatever…

Bob has no incentive whatsoever to try to improve his skills: He knows he’s not as good as Joe. But Joe’s great on account of his genes, not because he practiced or studied more than Bob did, back in school. Obviously Bob can’t compete with people who were kid geniuses, and he shouldn’t exert himself unduly on their account.

It is a great rant and a rich source of stuff for us to reflect upon. At least I came back knowing more about myself and realizing I had been that Bob at many a time, and probably still am a Bob in many ways.

This is reinforced by the works of two authors I respect very highly — Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas (of the Pragmatic Programmer fame). Dave, for instance, thought deeply about the importance of study and practice. He went on to devised a set of exercises, named Code Kata, for exerting the programmer’s brain — stuff for us to chew upon to become better at what we do. And finally, here is his take on the various phases of learning and skill acquisition which is similar to the Shu Ha Ri theory, but based on the art of karate.

Of course, the real spark for this article was this great post by Jeff Atwood: “Programming: Love It or Leave It” earlier this week. From there the trail of reading (thanks to Google) led me to this rather controversial article about how to become a better programmer by not programming. I don’t think, for once, the author is 100% right. Yes, Bill Gates is right, but the point is people can improve and many people really do. As Kathy says, of course, that won’t be enough to be the gold medal winner at the Olympics, but we can be the street, council, district, state or national champions, at least.

So, the point is, IMHO, it is a far safer better to depend on books rather than trying to observe a mentor, for the simple fact that at least I have bumped into only a handful of people in India in eight years from whom I could learn something about programming. Of course there are lots of people to observe and learn about people management and the art of maintaining relationships or soft skills, but that is beside the point of this post. I accept that perhaps I am not good enough to have worked at a Google or a Microsoft, or that I was perhaps exceptionally unlucky (not to have bumped into more mentors) but the point is 90% of the software developers are not working at Google or Microsoft either. And people like me too have a right — and a duty — to improve, right? 

As Peter Norvig says in the article Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years, to be really good at anything including programming requires lots of time, effort and dedication, and more importantly, we all know that if the pioneers of the Design Patterns movement hadn’t read Christopher Alexander’s work(s) on architecture, there probably would have been no Design Patterns movement. And if I hadn’t read those great books or those great blogs, there wouldn’t have been this post either!

Also, I wouldn’t have started my journey of becoming better had my good friend Apple not read the K&R book and made me both feel small and admire his skills when he wrote this sometime in 1999 in my notebook:  

while (*t++ = *s++); 

That, for the uninitiated, is the succint way of copying a source character array into a target character array in C. Apple wrote this after asking me to write a program to copy an array, and the best I could think of was to write half a dozen lines or so to achieve the same, and without using pointers. That was the moment when my journey to get better actually started. Even after that moment, I was the guy who did his C++ project in C (at NIIT), since I couldn’t quite understand what this fuss about using objects was all about (and I was good at C thanks to the K&R book)! And it required reading The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup in 2000 to make me see the light, at last, and luckily, I never turned my back at lapping up a great programming book since then!

To wrap up, I would rather continue reading than either sitting idle or just (waiting for and) watching the right mentor. And I would ask every developer interested in becoming better to do the same.

Oh, and yes, lest I forget…Happy new year and thanks for reading yet another long post!

"Software development productivity would skyrocket if the least effective 30% were fired tomorrow" — Neal Ford

It was in the December of 2005 that I first wrote about how to be a better programmer. At that time I was into my fifth year as a programmer, and though I wanted to write what I am writing today, I decided to narrow down my scope to non-technical issues. I wrote about code readability and code maintainability that day. As important as these issues were (are), I guess there is a larger issue that must be addressed — the technical skill set of the programmers. Then I wrote about (nay, linked to) the fatherly advice to new programmers by Chuck Jazdzewski.

I am now into my eighth year as a programmer, and unfortunately, the rate at which the industry has understood the importance of the quality of code or for that matter about issues like code readability or code maintainability is pretty dismal. This might be justified by arguments like "in service industry, deadline is more important". But people just don’t understand that in the rush to push the software out of the door, the quality of the code suffers, which directly affects how quickly you can ship the second or later versions. To make matters worse, people who can really understand the code at a deep level, and who are really interested in programming, is a minority, and I guess it would remain that way for the foreseeable future.

The triggering point for writing that piece three years ago was a mail from my counterpart in UK, who wanted the team to ensure that they are putting comments properly, and (though he didn’t explicitly mention the words, he provided an example that pointed to writing) comment at the level of intent. I am not sure how many people read that post (considering that I find it difficult to tell people that I blog; except to my close friends and family), but at least from that day, I made it a point to tell my team members the importance of writing code the proper way, and when required, show them how it is done. The triggering point for writing this has been yet another series of events. I thought it was time I write this down, so that a) I can refer back when I want to, and, b) pass this on to anyone to whom I feel like preaching in the future :).

The first and the most important aspect to become a better programmer is to have something called interest or involvement. Half the crowd I meet are programming just for the sake of doing some work. Programming, unfortunately, is not similar to doing most other jobs where you learn and master something once, and you can carry on without learning anything new for quite some time, and in some cases, for years altogether (or for life). Careers that spring to my mind include Government Service, Accountancy, Banking, Teaching, and certain professions like certain streams of Engineering and Law. Of course, in each of these cases, there is something new to learn every year (or every few years), but compared to the frequency at which things change, and the effort involved to keep ahead of the curve, they do appear trivial and manageable. [I know this is going to be a controversial perspective, but being a Mechanical Engineer and being someone who has a passion for teaching, and who dreamt about doing M.Tech and becoming a professor, I hope I know what I am talking about here]. Anyways, I don’t mean any kind of disrespect to any of the professions. I am just pointing out the fact that you don’t have to explicitly sit down and read a few books on your subject to remain good in many a profession out there.

In programming, what you know today is of little or no use two years down the line. I remember reading way back in 2002 about an interesting incident narrated by David Chappell in his book, Understanding Dotnet, First Edition. Chappell was taking a session on DCOM (if I remember right) at Moscow, when someone in the crowd got up and asked him why is that Microsoft is changing the technology every few years, and how he is finding it difficult to cope up with that. Chappell told him, as a matter of fact, that if he finds the change difficult to cope with, he is perhaps in the wrong profession. I wish we could make more programmers understand this simple fact – the fact that in this profession one can’t stop learning. In fact the number of programmers who have read any of the top 25 books on programming or software would be less than 10%. This might be an example of the Sturgeon’s Law (that 90% of people will never care and 10% of people would cover up for them in most professions).

To make matters interesting the IT industry doesn’t quite teach them that programming is important, and I live in a society, where if I tell them I am programming in the eighth year of my career, people think I am a (lowly) programmer still, perhaps because I don’t have what it takes to be a manager or a team leader who mostly takes care of team management related activities. The trend is to learn programming at the level of writing if..else, for..do and yes, playing around a bit with something called objects (without really understanding what they actually are and what they are meant to be), and do programming for four or five years, all the while remaining at that basic level, never bothering to go out of the way to improve oneself, and jump on the management related bandwagon at the first possible instance.

This is where some of the most successful companies around the world stand out, and it is not a coincidence that most of them are run by people who were great programmers, and who still love and do programming. The best example would be Google and I can never forget the beauty of this story and what it tells you about the company (or the story of how Sergey Brin wrote an application to test Android, and the application was about using the accelerometer in the device to determine the time an Android phone was in the air when it is tossed up; the point is there are very talented programmers at the top who are really interested in coding in spite of being so successful), though there are quite a few others like Microsoft, Martin Fowler’s ThoughtWorks, Joel Spolsky’s Fog Creek Software, and Steve McConnell’s Construx Software. Construx has published the Construx Professional Ladder for its employees who aspire to move up the corporate heirarchy (the ladder), and the best part is that it ensures that those who grow to be the Team Leads or Managers, are people who are widely read, and who have understood the nuances of programming, and can still solve the problem, if the programmers are not able to solve it.

To put matters in perspective, check this recommended reading list for a Level 10 programmer at Construx. Please note that Level 10 is not the Architect or the Technical Leader. It is the programmer with some experience ("College graduates will generally start at Level 9. Experienced developers may start at Level 10"). That might appear a bit over the top by your or my standards, but that tells you what separates the great companies from the merely good or average ones — it is the quality of the people. I think it was Kent Beck (in Extreme Programming Explained, Second Edition) who said something along the lines of "a more talented team will almost always beat an average or less talented team, no matter how disciplined and process oriented the average or less talented team is, and you can’t do much about it". A cruel (for me, at least) example of that in the wild is watching the Germans end up as the runners up (or loosing semi finalists) at the World Cups in 2002 and 2006, and in Euro 2008. With a bit more talent (or a bit more botch-up by the opposition, they could have won any of those events).

To be a good programmer, one needs to have a good grasp of the fundamentals of programming (and there is no better language to learn this than C followed by C++, though that unfortunately is out of fashion these days). This must be followed by learning a modern mainstream programming language like Java or C#. But if you start with either Java or C#, you would miss quite a bit on really understanding pointers and objects at a fundamental level. This must be followed by learning, reading and eventually mastering OOAD, UML, Refactoring and Design Patterns. It will be really useful if one can find the time to explore and learn dynamic programming languages like Python or Ruby, as they bring a different perspective to programming, thus enriching one’s knowledge and understanding.

Yet another mandatory aspect going forward would be exposure to Agile methodologies (don’t think I am crazy, but there is a big crowd out there that doesn’t understand what is agile). Even if the team is not 100% agile, there is a lot to learn from the agile community. If anyone has any doubt about agile, the only thing to keep in mind that the top guys of the Design Patterns movement are also the people who were the forefathers of the Agile movement — people like Ward Cunningham, Kent Beck, Eric Gamma, Martin Fowler, Alistair Cockburn, Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt to name a few that I can recollect over the top of my head. Since each of them are titans in their own rights, there must be something in it for us to learn.

The best part of this learning, IMHO, is that it leaves one in such a strong position to negotiate most of the stuff that comes one’s way – a bit like how Dravid could easily and with grace negotiate the unplayable deliveries from the Donalds, McGraths, Pollocks and Waqars of this world, in his pomp, in spite of not having grown up facing them or anyone of their calibre. This was made possible by the fact that in spite of not being a genius like Sachin or Lara, he kept on working on his game, improved every day as a batsman by putting in the effort, and thinking about his game. [I wrote this without being aware of the match saving 100 he made at Mohali].

The best resource that I am aware of to learn the basics of the aforementioned stuff , that I am aware of, is listed below. These books helped me immensely in my development as a professional, and I hope at least some of you can and will find them useful.

Programming Language basics:

The C Programming Language by Kerninghan and Ritchie (the K&R book)

The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup (it is a tome, but worth every minute of your time)

The Java Programming Language by James Gosling et al (a beautiful book)

Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel (or the unpublished C# version freely available on the net)

Design basics:

UML Distilled by Martin Fowler

Refactoring by Martin Fowler

Applying UML and Patterns by Craig Larman

Object Oriented Analysis by Peter Coad and Edward Yourdon

Object Oriented Design by Peter Coad and Edward Yourdon

Design Patterns:

Design Patterns by Gamma et al. [the GoF book; I am yet to read this as it is in C++]

Head First Design Patterns by Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates

Design Patterns Explained by Alan Shalloway and James R. Trott

Taking the skills to the next level:

Code Complete by Steve McConnell, Second Edition

The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative by Pete McBreen

Books on Agile:

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Second Edition, by Kent Beck (there are two editions and it is fascinating to read both back to back :)

Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, Second Edition, by Alistair Cockburn

There are no shortcuts to mastery in any field, and software is no different. Unless you read some of the above books, you wouldn’t even know what all you miss (in terms of knowledge and skills missing from your toolbox). Again, this must be supplemented by some real hard work at the PC — programming, trying to implement and refine what one has learned. As the old saying goes, there is no substitute for practice.

Next, since we live in a society, we do need to work upon our soft skills, and people interaction skills come right at the top of the skills to acquire. One of the best resource to learn from this would be How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, as attested by both Jeff Atwood and Steve McConnell. In fact, if I remember right, McConnell writes something along the lines of "it must be made a mandatory book for every member of the team". How true!

Internet is such a free and ever available source to learn new stuff. In addition to reading MSDN or other technology oriented sites, read the great programmer’s blogs and learn from the masters. Let Google Reader be your best friend in this attempt. It has been for me, for three years now.

Update [14-Jan-09]: cleaned up the essay a bit and included a few more links in the story.

As we bid adieu to 2007 and look forward to a what should hopefully be a wonderful 2008, I thought I would break my silence and post an update. So, here is a not so quick wrap up of 2007.

The first three quarters

The biggest event of the first quarter was Harish marrying Vidya on 9th Feb. We (me and Preethi) had a nice time attending his wedding at Bangalore, and it also was an occasion for the Rice Bowl Avenue kids to catch up with each other. We last met during my wedding, but Apple couldn’t make it then, though Raghu was around. This time Apple was around, though Raghu couldn’t make it since he was chilling it out at the Swiss Alpine valley.

The second quarter was full of work, work and more work. I set some awful records as a workaholic during this period. I managed to work for 10 weeks straight without taking even a single day off — most of the time working for 12+ hours per day. This was for creating an Offline version of my product that would talk to Interbase instead of SQL Server. The best part of the design was that we managed to do this with minimal code change to the “data access layer” (that sits inside the UI layer) to talk to Interbase instead of SQL Server, though the existing data access components won’t/can’t talk to Interbase. Once again, the years spend honing up the OOAD skills payed off.

March-April was also the time of the Cricket World Cup, and luckily Indians put up such a pathetic show that I was free to concentrate on work rather than worrying about whether Indians would march into the Semis or the Finals.

The work was tight during the third quarter too, though mercifully not as tight as the second quarter. In May (or early June) Gazoo paid us a visit at home (on the day Shruthi, Subru’s niece turned 1). July saw Ram(kumar) becoming father and we all were happy for Uji and Ram.

August saw us taking a break from work and packing and traveling to Bombay to spend the Independence Day week. We managed to visit Reghu at Pune too during this time. August also saw Ramesh relocating to Chennai, and as a result, we had had some great moments during the rest of the year. None was more joyful than hosting Apple and watching Yuvi hitting six sixes in an over with both of them. This period also saw Indians becoming T20 champions, and that was some consolation, really, after the World Cup debacle.

The Last Quarter

The last quarter was made memorable thanks to another big event — Mahesh getting engaged to Vidya at Trivandrum on 6th Dec. This meant that we now have two Vidyas around and need to devise a way to distinguish the two when both are around :).

Harish and Vidya paid us a visit during Oct end and we had a great time at my place, though it was raining incessantly that day. Another good news during this period was Sarath becoming a father, when Manju gave birth to their daughter Veda on Dec 13th.

We traveled a bit during this period — there were multiple trips to Kerala — a pilgrimage trip to Palghat, Guruvayoor and Kadampuzha during October, and then the trip to attend Mahesh’s engagement three weeks ago. This was my first trip to Trivandrum since attending Harish’s engagement last year, and this marked the longest break between two trips to Trivandum in my life. We had a great time at Trivandrum. We stayed at Reghu’s place (as usual) and managed to pull off quite a few things that we normally couldn’t do earlier.

We managed to pay Papps a proper visit, catch up with all the relatives, roam around a bit with Sir and Mami going to places like Valiyathura Kadalpaalam (a pier; the first time I am going there), watching the sunset at Shankumugam beach and spending the late evening at the Musuem lawns. We had dinner out that night at the Aryaas, and then I manged to take Preethi out at 2100 hrs to The Archies (the best ice-cream parlor bar none in the world known to me and many others). Needless to say, we enjoyed every moment of our stay there ;).

We were privileged to see the return trip from Trivandrum getting screwed thanks to the strike by the Train Drivers in Kerala (haven’t heard about Train Drivers striking before, thought it might have happened before), and that was quite an experience. Luckily we got seats in a dubba Air bus and so managed to reach Chennai on Monday morning and avoid taking any extra leaves.

This time there was no Jiju (who is in US doing his course to become a pilot) in Trivandrum, and that made it a bit different from the normal trips. We managed to meet Sunil for a few minutes as he was in the City for some work.

Through out the year my good old Nokia 3200’s battery was giving lots of trouble (the original piece from circa 2003) and when we went enquiring for a new battery, we came to know that Nokia has stopped producing the battery model that was in 3200. The new ones don’t quite fit, and so the only option was to go in for a duplicate. So, I decided to exchange it for a new one, and finally exchanged it for a brand new Sony Ericsson k550i Cybershot. It comes with cool set of features at a good price — a good 2MP outdoor camera and an awesome audio player — for 8k.

Subru was in Chennai for about 10 days during the last two weeks, and we had a nice time roaming around in R.A.Puram and generally catching up with the events in each other’s lives. We also took some nice snaps during this period.

Yesterday we visited Ramesh’s place in Thiruvanmiyur and went to the Thiruvanmiyur beach too, and there are some snaps of his house in there, and Preethi just loved the oonjal. It is a pretty decent house situated amidst lots of greenery, and that is good thing to have in a hot place like Chennai.

Thanks for reading thus far, and have a fantastic 2008 ahead, and please start using Mozilla Firefox and Google Reader, if you haven’t yet. It will change the way you think of and approach the web for sure.

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It is after a while that I felt like posting something and upload some pix. We just returned back from a memorable pilgrimage trip to Kerala over the weekend.

Myself, Preethi, my parents and her parents (who were on a visit to Chennai) left for Palghat on Thu, 04-Sep-07 and came back to Chennai on Mon, 08-Sep-07. It was primarily a pilgrimage and so we got to visit lots of temples in Palghat, visited Kalpathy gramam (where I stayed during my Engineering days), Malampuzha Dam and my alma mater, NSS College of Engineering, Palghat.

We left Palghat on Sat morning to Kadampuzha Bhagavathi Temple, a fantastic temple in the Malappuram district, 3 km off Vettichira in the NH 17 connecting Thrissur and Kozhikode (and beyond probably).

After spending 4 hours at Kadampuzha, we left for Guruvayoor, and visited the famous Anathavalam in Guruvayoor on the way. We had great darshan on Sat evening and again had darshan on Sunday. We also visited the other temples like Mammiyoor, Parthasarathy, Balaji and Sai Baba.

Post lunch, we packed again and were on the way back to Palghat. Sun night we boarded the train to travel back to Chennai.

The worst part of the trip was the fact that almost all the roads in the parts of Kerala I visited were in pretty bad shape, something most people from Kerala are aware of. I heard that the last roads in Palghat were worked upon was about 8 years back, while I was there! Amazing, isn’t it? It happens only in Kerala.

Earlier, during August, we had taken a week off from work to spend some quality time at Preethi’s home in Bombay. That too was quite a memorable trip and as a bonus got to read quite a bit during this trip. I got to finish the Edition 1 and 2 of “XP Explained: Embrace Change” by Kent Beck. I also got to visit some of Preethi’s relatives and family friends and her Sify office near the Airport. We also met my good friend Biju during our stay. I also started watching some great action from the English Premiere League.

We spend the Independence Day at Pune with my cousin Reghu. He took us to the Tirupati Balaji temple that morning. It is another great temple in the middle of (almost) nowhere, about 2 hrs journey from Pune, lying between the Satara Highway on one side and the Bangalore Highway on the other. Climate was just pristine during this period, as the South West monsoon was just winding up its act.

I have uploaded some of the pix taken at various points of time in 2007. Click the links below to watch them:

Palghat trip, 2007

Bombay trip, 2007

Chennai photos, 2007

This time I have decided to try out Picasa Web Albums instead of Flickr (Reghu, hope you are happy now) for a change, and let us see whether I like this better enough to make the switch.

What I don’t like about Picasa is that it offers only 1 GB of free storage. There is no such storage limit in Flickr, though you can only upload 20 or 40 MB of pix per month and one gets to display only the 200 most recent photos on the Flickr page. Of course, all the old photos are still available for viewing provided you know which tag to use to view them.

I would love to post my musings on software and life and click and upload pix more regularly going forward. Let us see how far I succeed. I don’t have a camera with me and so that is a serious limitation on trips like these. I have lots of pix awaiting upload from 2006 and let us see whether I get around to upload them as well.

Thanks for reading so far. Take care and be well. And please start using RSS for your own sake if you haven’t started yet. You might get lost in its magic just as I have!

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Micheal Swindell, the CodeGear Product Manager, provided the following data in a reply to a post in borland.public.delphi.non-technical group:

“Delphi has a developer population of approx 1.75 million users worldwide in  2006. Delphi has 15% IDE marketshare overall (7.7% ranked out of 100%) and is the #2 Windows IDE and the #4 IDE overall (C++Builder is #3 and #5
respectively).”

…and you thought Delphi was not big/good!!

It is just that not many people are aware of it. No, you can’t use it to create an ERP application (perhaps), but it is pretty darn useful for 80% of the commercial software work carried out in most of the companies, and it actually helps you to create it faster.

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I have been a passionate Delphi developer for the last 5 years and I can assure you that there is some truth in what I read somewhere: Once you start using Delphi, every other IDE and language appears inadequate!

Now, before you start baying for my blood, let me put on record that I am some one who learned and programmed in Fortran, C, C++ (including programming using templates/generics way back in 2000-01), and then did some basic J2EE programming during 2000-01, and then programmed Dot net using C# when it was still in early Beta (late 2001-early 2002), and even after it was officially launched, and so I know what I am talking about.

Simply put, there is nothing that even comes close to the thrill of using Delphi for development. That will be similar to saying: Simlply put, nothing even comes close to browsing using Mozilla Firefox! Hope you get the gist of it :).

The best news in the last few years for the Delphi community is this: Borland DevCo is in the process of recreating the magic of Delphi by launching the Turbo product range [Delphi for Win 32, Delphi for DotNet, C# and C++] that is available for free. You can download it from here.

There is a lot of renewed interest from the community, and there are lots of free introductory and advanced tutorials out there too. More info available here at the blog of Allen Bauer, Chief Scientist, Borland DevCo.

Now, hear this: Evans Data conducted a Spring 2006 IDE developer survey, and know what? The long dead and buried Delphi was rated first (yes, you read it right!) in the most important “Compiler/Interpreter” and “Debugger” category! More info from the horse’s [David I, who is the Vice President, Developer Relations and Chief Evangelist of Borland DevCo] mouth here.

Of course, this is not meant to take anything away from the obvious bitter truth that, like Macs, Delphi is a third or fourth rate citizen in the world of programming, languishing behind the products from the behemoths like Mircrosoft, IBM/Sun. The good old days of Delphi being the “big new thing” probably will never be back, but one can wish for a momentary glance or two at glory! It has almost the feeling of a classic Asterix story — Gauls v/s Ceaser(s)!

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July 2006 was a month of very less activity, lots of reading, some great moments, and some heartbreaks. The heartbreaks started with the German team loosing out to the eventual champions Italy, and the final twist came when Italy managed to steal the World Cup. If ever there was a Champion unworthy of the title (when teams like Argentina, Germany and France were around), it was Italy! Of course, they won and they are the champions, and I better keep my mouth shut! :)

As I was saying in the first para, during this month and the next, I managed to read quite a bit (compared to my recent book reading trends). The best of the lot must be the works of Robert M Pirsig — the Zen book (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and the not-so-famous, but equally good (if not better) second part — Lila. Both have had tremendous influence in my life, and I would advice anyone to give the books a go when they get the chance! The depth and breadth of coverage is quite remarkable.

I should also stress upon the fact that they are not the usual fiction or the fad books, but are categorized under “Philosophy” by the publisher. They are a bit heavy (in terms of pages and theme wise), but are well worth the time invested. I would try to post more about them later on, but for now these two links would do. But suffice to say that the concept of the Metaphysics of Quality (which is explored in the Zen book and given a firm shape in Lila) are simply the best thing I have ever read! But I am sure I wouldn’t mind reading both the books a few more times, time permitting!

In fact, if you are still having a doubt, this is what Joel Spolsky has to say about the book in his famous Book Reviews post:

“Some people’s attitude towards programming is that it’s a nifty way to
pay the bills. For others, that’s not enough… our work is a
significant a part of our lives, and we need a philosophical
understanding to make sense of it. This book goes a long way towards
relating engineering and philosophy”.

I am deeply indebted to Joel for making me aware of this book (in 2002), Jiju for referring these gems way back in 2003-04 when I was out to purchase a gift for a friend, and to Raghu, who gave me the thing I appreciate the most as gift: Vouchers to buy books (at my engagement) :). In fact, when I left my previous work, I was asked what I wanted as a parting gift. I told them, I am planning to buy a book. Give me your contribution in cash, I will contribute the rest to pay the bill for some book I had on my mind. Probably, I am just crazy! ;)

Apart from these two seminal works, I also managed to read two more great books: Tuesdays with Morrie and The Alchemist. I also enjoyed the Dan Brown novel Angels and Demons. I recommend A&D to anyone who thought The Da Vinci Code was good! This is the novel in which Brown introduces the character of Robert Langdon, and is quite absorbing in itself. I heard that the movie will be out in 2007.

Apart from this, I had been to Trivandrum and Mahabalipuram during this period, and there were lots of team-treats at work as well. So, in all, I was having a nice time.

The lows during this period include a few days I was not well, Mom suffering from fever and being down for more than 30 days (in three slots of 10 days each over a period of 40 days starting in May and ending in Aug), the countless visits to the Doc and the Apollo for treatment. Mom is doing fine, except for muscle pain in her right leg, that makes her limp while she is walking these days. Docs say that it will take at least couple of months for the muscle pain (induced by Chikungunya that spread like wild fire down south of India during summer) to go away!

Thanks for reading thus far. Have a great week ahead.

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I have been working as a programmer for a little over 5 years now, and it was with great interest that I read the article What is a Professional Programmer, written by Sarah George, and hosted at DeveloperDotStar Magazine.

I think I can say that I have been on the right path so far when I evaluate myself on the various parameters she has mentioned, viz., trustworthiness, teamwork, leadership, communication, constant updating of skills, an interest in minimizing risks and accountability.

However, there was another theme running right through that article, the theme of “how much Domain knowledge you need to do good Software Development?”. It was triggered by this comment by Mario Van Damme, to which Andy Tegethoff posted a great reply. But Andy didn’t just stop there. He followed it up with this wonderful post on this topic.

I have been of the opinion that Domain Knowledge just cannot be the be-all and end-all of Software Development. Yes, one needs to know enough of the domain to make sense of what one is doing, and what the client is saying. However, the current trend in the Software market in India (and probably elsewhere) is this: an average candidate with average-to-good domain knowledge is a better bet than a good/great programmer with almost zero domain expertise. During screenings and interviews, I have often experienced this line of thought in action. The argument is something like “programming anyone can do[!]; but to get guys with domain knowledge is very difficult”.

So, one is considered a better/worthy candidate if one is having previous working knowledge in a domain. And sometimes, the programming skills takes a clear back seat since this new guy is average-to-good at domain. Of course, domain is where the money is (meaning you get paid more).

What these recruiters forget is the basic fact that you are recruiting people for doing software development, and not to look after your domain/business. In fact, as established by Extreme Programming school of thought, it is much more valuable to have a true blue Domain guy (the actual Customer/Client or someone representing him) in the programming shop with good programmers than to have an army of domgrammers — short for domain-oriented-programmers. After all, most of the time, you just can’t become great at a domain in a short span (say 1-2 years) without sacrificing your programming skills. Of course, I am talking about normal people here. As the rule goes, “there will be exception to all rules, except this one”!.

In one of my previous projects, there was this culture of “anyone can do programming; understanding the domain is what it is all about” logic. I was really amused and shocked at that line of thought, but thankfully, I never subscribed to that school.

Towards the end of my first year in that project, we found out that the most critical module of that project was causing a hell of a lot of problems. We also found that there were serious design flaws and hell of a lot of bugs in that module. Luckily, I was learning Refactoring, UML and Design Patterns at that time, and my design skills were good at that time (or at least I thought so :). During this time I was looking after that buggy module and so was spending lot of time fixing bugs and logic-flaws, that just should not have been there in the first place.

I took it upon myself to set the house right, by re-designing the core of that module, and doing enough refactoring to change the design. After “some” struggle, I managed to convince my boss(es) that this is the only way to do it and that I can really do it. Remember, I was still considered one among the juniors in the team.

By this time, client was also breathing down the bosses’ throat to solve the highly critical bugs in that highly critical module. So, at the end of it all, the boss(es) agreed to allow me a free hand in doing what I wanted to do.

I was able to come up with a new design, and then refactor the existing code to fit the new design framework. It was not refactoring actually — though I used it a lot — since it involved a change in the behaviour; after all I had to weed out the bugs. During this process (which took me about 3 months) I had to talk to the client scores of times, communicate the design to the team, do lots of coding and teaching, explain the design to the boss(es) and client etc. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I also understood that no matter how hard I try, I can never match a pure domain guy’s depth of knowledge. Also, it is not useful too, since I can easily learn from them. In the process I also learned that it is pretty hard for a software guy to be as good as a real domain guy, who is breathing the domain day in and day out.

More importantly, had I fooled myself into believing — during my initial days — that learning a few hundred terms and definitions of the domain will make me a better programmer, I would never have been able to come up with the new design.

Just thought will post about one of my core beliefs — that technical knowledge is a hundred times more important for a programmer than domain knowledge.

But of course, the fact remains that I am paid and will continue to be paid less than a hot shot domgrammer or Business Analyst. But that is ok, since I get to do, what IMHO is, the most challenging task of converting what is required into a great design/software that provides the solution.

Of course, Dan Read offers his point of view here on this topic, and as always, it oozes with pragmatism and common sense. But yet, it is difficult to miss the message that in 90% of Software houses, domain knowledge is only that important.

Thanks for reading thus far. It will be really great to get some feedback/comments. Have a great week ahead.

Yet another hectic week at work, followed by an equally hectic weekend. That was the theme of the the week that was. We are, as I had written earlier, gearing up for the whole design and development cycle of the next version, and since I am now part of the planning team, had a nice time charting out the phases and dates. Incidentally got a taste of Microsoft Project too as part of this process.

During the course of the week, I had a long tele-chat with my good friend Ram who stays in Hyderabad with his wife Uji, where both are working. They stretched the weekend and traveled to Vizag. Yet to get the pix, Rams! send it across.

The weekend saw me accompanying Amma to Cochin to visit her bereaved cousin brother. He lost his wife (my aunt) a couple of weeks ago, and only now we got time to pay them a visit. I lost a very nice aunt, who though was only my first-aunt (first as in first-cousin) was nice and caring, and always ensured that I was comfortable whenever I stayed with them. And yes, I had troubled them a few times during 1999-2000 when I was writing all those exams conducted by the various PSUs, applying for the post of Mechanical Engineer!

She was 68, and passed away due to Cardiac Arrest that developed as she was entering the Hospital to meet the Doctor for a routine checkup. She is survived by my uncle and their four children. They too have inherited the inherent goodness of my aunt in various shades.

Thus ended my week with train travel on both Sat and Sun nights. One more week gone, lot more memories added!

Have a great week ahead, and do post some comments — positive or negative — once in a while :). That will give me an idea about how I am doing. May be, I can do it better, who knows?! ;)

I was pondering over the last few days over having the right kind of people in a team, any team, including a Software Development team. It suddenly flashed in my mind that I had seen a quote attributed to Dravid somewhere on the same topic.

At last, I figured it out. Dravid had given a rather absorbing interview to the Cricinfo magazine that appeared in the inaugural issue (Jan 2006 issue that had Dravid on the front cover) of the magazine. This was what I was looking for:

“The right people – and I hate to say it – not have the wrong people around them. You don’t want people whose own insecurities, whose own problems and whose own fears drag everyone else down. That can be a big dampener in teams…

“…If you’re going to be spending time in the team always having to cajole and look after a few people, you’re doing a disservice to the rest because you’re wasting and investing too much time and energy in a few people who’re taking away from the group. Players need to understand that they need to give energy to the unit. There are times of course when you’re not doing well and your form’s not good and you’ll need the support of other people. But most of the time you’ve got to give to the team and make sacrifices to the team and give back to the team.”

Read it in full here.