Year: 2009

Software engineering is like cooking

During the last few month I’ve been explaining software engineering to management types quite a bit.  Most of the “bosses” that I talked to weren’t technical at all, so I was trying to stay away from famous concepts, examples, and terminology as much as I could.  Of course, that required some sort of substitute for concepts, examples, and terminology.  I’ve tried analogies from different unrelated areas, and was surprised as how good cooking was fitting the purpose.

Before I go any further, I have to say that I am not a cook and that I don’t know much about cooking.  But.  I know just about the same as any other average human being.  Which, sort of, moves me into the same category with my targets, or “bosses”, as I called them before.

Here are a few examples that worked well.

Continue reading Software engineering is like cooking

W.

W.

I went to see a totally other movie today, but somehow the schedules got all messed up and I ended up watching “W.“.  I haven’t seen any trailers or posters for the film, except at the time of buing the ticket.  And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t very pleased with the thought of watching more about George W. Bush – one man who has been on the screens way more than he deserves.  However, the alternative was a really bad remake of a really bad sci-fi movie of the 1950s, so I went for it.

And that turned out to be a good decision.  “W.” is one of those movies with the coolest cast, however very under-promoted due to not so popular ideas or angles.  “W.” was directed by Oliver Stone – one of the best directors to bring a controversial and unpopular discussion to the table.  Roles were played by Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, Scott Glenn, Jeffrey Wright, and a few other people that you will no doubt recognize.

What I liked the most about the movie was how the good and the bad were shown.  There was a whole range of characters, some of who were shown good with a few bad mistakes behind their belts, and some of who were bad with some good deeds done.  And while the film was mostly about George W. Bush, each and every character was given enough time and development.  Overall, it’s a really nice look at good and bad, morale and ethics, tough decisions, historical judgements, and rewards.

One other thing that I liked was how similar were the characters in the movie to their real prototypes. Not being an American, not living in the USA, not following the political scene closely, and havinga really bad memory for names, I was amazed with how fast I could recognize the characters.  Often I even had to look closer to see if the character was played by the actor or if any real documentary footage was used.  That, of course, is a combination of actors’ work with make-up, costume design, and camera operators.  In the end – an excellent result.

I’d rate this film as 7 out of 10.  Recommended to anyone who is interested in today’s world and an alternative look on how and why things ended up being as they are.

Programming religions

I’m slowly catching up with the news stream and all the jokes of the last few weeks.  “If programming languages were religions” is a nice one.  Here is PHP, which I spent the most time with now:

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity – Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it’s not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of “goto hell” was abandoned.

And here is Perl, which is my favourite programming language so far:

Perl would be Voodoo – An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

Check the rest of them for fun and profit.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7

I’ve just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.7, and yes, it’s as good as they said it would be.  The new interface is looks better, is more convenient, and even feels faster.  Things are somehow closer to where they should be and overall it makes more sense.  However, I am yet to test it on a few non-technical bloggers who I help with blog hosting and administration.

The upgrade itself was fast and painless as usual – just overwrite the old files with new, visit administration, and click on a button to upgrade the database structure when asked so.  That’s it.  I’ve also scrolled through the Settings section just to see what’s new (a few things are), and that’s about it.

I’ve noticed that there are a few glitches here and there, most of which are related to plugins that I am using.  Hopefully I’ll sort them out soon.  In the worst case scenario, they will be taken care of in the new design that is in the works for this blog.