Pirate’s Grandma

I never thought that this children's song contains so much management wisdom...

Wind fills the sails of brigantine,
Like in an old adage,
And pirate’s grandma’s sending off
Grandson to brigandage.

She packed brass knuckles and a knife,
And bag for loot and gold,
And then, of course, toothpaste and soap,
And fresh eye-patch in fold.

“My little pirate, dear child,
Our breadwinner,
Don’t board ships in vain,
Never skip your dinner.

Don’t visit dens and stashes,
Those guys run amok,
Put a chaser after rum.
For the healthy stomach.

Go from diamonds missing suit,
Don’t be defensive,
Don’t hurt orphans, not for naught -
Ammo is expensive!”
...

Wind fills the sails of brigantine,
Like in an old adage,
And grandson-pirate’s sending off
Grandma to brigandage.

Pardon poor translation from Russian. The original text by Eduard Uspensky. Cross post from my personal site.

One Feature for Future Operating System...

Long ago operating systems completely missed the idea of “installation”. Setup of each program was completely personal business of that program. Now they became a bit more wise that that, but still featuring that naive liberal-democratic way of how other people treat my hard drive. Which is one of the reasons for the spread of sexually-transmitted... pardon, Internet-downloaded software transmitted computer viruses.

If I’d be asked, I’d say that one feature I want from any future operating system is treating any program, wishing to install on my machine, as a feature, totally encapsulated, with operating system knowing each piece to keep or remove, when I am done with it, and which activates only when it’s needed, and which is deactivated afterward.

Say, SQL Server Personal Edition. On one hand, this is an amazing piece of freely available technology from the world #1 commercial software vendor. On another hand, 90% of the time I am waiting for this piece of crap to start up, when booting my computer, is a total waste, because I don’t actually need it this time.

Is it too much to ask?

Cross-post from http://eldar.com/node/401">the personal blog...

How do I change situations in which I cannot work effectively as a professional programmer?

Just got my copy of "Understanding the Professional Programmer" by Gerald Weinberg. Bravo!

"Some of the methods that the professional programmer should be working on are these:

1. What should I do about a program for a well-defined problem that I don't believe should be solved at all?

...

5. How do I work effectively with people whose problems are not well defined, who don't understand as much about computers as I do, who understand more about many other things than I do, and whose motivations are different from mine?

6. How do I change situations in which I cannot work effectively as a professional programmer?

...

9. How do I work on those aspects of my own personality and problem-solving approach that are so personal I can't even see them, even though they may be the most important factor in my effectiveness as a programmer?"

Two Developers and Performance Review

Yesterday, two developers (no names) from a large company, which I don’t work for anymore, complained to me about their performance review process.

Both are my friends and both work in the same team under the same manager. One had a new component that he had to rewrite three times. Naturally, testers, PM and he himself filed tons of bugs to track this work. Other developer had reasonably stable component, so he had very few bugs.

Developer #1 was told that while he fixed all the bugs, he simply had too high bug count, and having so many bugs is simply not acceptable!

Developer #2 was told that while he had very few bugs, he also fixed very few bugs, and such low fix rate is simply not acceptable!

Ah-h-h!... Priceless.

Google made me an offer I could not refuse...

Finally, you may have noticed that I am not at MSFT anymore, I am at Google. Just to be fair, it's not like I really tried to fled MSFT. In fact, I tried to stay to the last moment. That was a good ride, and it was for more than 10 years! No kdding! Here is my 10 Year Award:



But in all fairness, Google fared better and that's where I am now.

He did...

Remember a good lead I mentioned before? Virdi? He really made it.

He is now "Director of Development" at MSFT in XBox org. Cool. I love it. At last, something gets done right.

About Software Development and Software Metrics

Just a few days ago I found an interesting article by Tom DeMarco about software metrics. You know, like number of lines of code, functions, or fixed bugs per developer. And he mentioned an interesting idea, that I always felt to be true.

It goes like that:

Yes, metrics help to fit into the budget and cut failing projects earlier. However, imagine two projects, each with a budget of $1 million. One brings in the end $100 millions, another $2 millions. Imagine that each of them went out of control and cost in the end $2 million. For the first project, it’s not bad at all, for the second project - it’s a catastrophe.

It seems that the more software metrics matter for the project, the more useless it is.

Ah-h-h!...