Codenauts

Whilst listening to DotNetRocks show #438 with Pat Hynds, there is a great gem on running status update sessions with a development team. Pat only asks for the following, assuming end of day updates:

1. What did you to today?
2. What did you get done?
3. What did you do that you didn’t plan on doing?
4. What did you plan to do but didn’t get done and why?
5. What do you plan to do tomorrow?
6. What do you need from others and what are your problems?

Not only is this suppose to keep updates short and sweet, but it immediately highlights roadblocks, dependencies and any interruptions that may occur.

At my current place, we typically go with:

1. What did you do yesterday?
2. What are you doing today?
3. What do you plan to accomplish today?

The crucial questions that are missing in this context are 3, 4 and 6. I feel that by not asking #4: “what did you plan to do but did not get done” , you’re losing a huge opportunity to light a fire under your devs to get things moving. Also by not asking #3, it obscures other factors vying for your developer’s time. There could be members of the team that are parasitic, in requirement other members to be constant crutches as well as other employees or factors that may reduce your team’s efficiency.

What’s your status update?

Here’s the answer to problem #1:

 C# | 
 copy code |
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1
var sum = (from n in Enumerable.Range(0, 1000)
2
              where ((n % 3) == 0 || (n % 5) == 0)
3
              select n).Sum();

I’ve been thinking a little more about the ways in which people communicate. There seems to be three main modes:

Face to face:

• This mode of communication is need when instantaneous feedback is required from the other party. To me a face to face is most important when negotiating, where we would absorb all aspects to the communication: body language, response times, verbal tones, etc. The 60% that is nonverbal communication. For the telephone and the web instant messaging, we may not be face to face physically, but there is still plenty communicated via voice tone, timeliness in replying and emoticons.

Broadcast:

• This type of communication is more one way, to inform the other party or parties of an event or circumstance. The most basic method would be to stand atop a hill and shout at the top of your lungs. A typical use would be to let your spouse know that you’ll be working late today, to let a friend know about the outcome of a sporting even or just a bit of news or gossip that was picked up. In the traditional snail mail sense, postcards would capture this form of communication in its essence, a “wish you were here!”. The the wired world, text messaging and Twitter fit the role extremely well.

Mail/Postal:

• I had a hard time classifying this types of communications, which represent modes of communications where information is sent, but there is no guarantee of receipt or reply. Communications modes that fit this paradigm are letters, voice mails and e-mails. This is also the second oldest mode of communication other than face to face, stretching back to ancient Rome.

The success of Twitter seems to hinge on the fact that it is extremly hard to pidgeon hole it to a particular mode of communication. Twitter is very good at the broadcast type of communication, whereby all your followers are notified of any updates. At the same time, it is possible to have IM like chats with it. The only area where it is weak is in the mail/postal forms of communication, but this could be worked around, albeit kludgey, via url shortening services. The success of Twitter is probably based more on its flexibility and its rich developer API and a little bit of luck. After all, even the success of Twitter took its inventors by surprise!

There has been a recent boom in mainstream attention to the micro-blogging web app that is Twitter, with celebrities, news outlets and your neighbor’s dog twittering about anything under the sun. I’ve only just recently signed up for Twitter, having not seen the fuss about it. Even after joining the rest of the twitterati, I did not see the value in it, until now.

It struck me tonight, in a fit of sleeplessness, that the Twitter is analagous to another channel of communication that has spread like wildfire in the last couple of years: SMS, also known as text messaging on phones. We use SMSes for everything, to tell our wives that we’ll be late for dinner, to tell our friends that we’re on our way to the pub and even to remind ourselves to remember picking up the milk.

If I where to make the comparison for the cellular phone and the internet, then:

• Phone Call is to Instant Messaging
• Voice mail is to E-Mail
• SMS is to Twitter

It became obvious to me as to why I did not see the fascination with Twitter. Based on my phone usage patterns, I primarily use the phone to

1. make voice calls, and
2. play solitaire

I use the computer in very much the same way, IM’ing and surfing the web!

As for the success of Twitter, its no surprise that with SMS text messaging accounting for a substantial portion of the telco’s revenue, hence becoming the cell phone’s killer app, that Twitter to has become the killer app of net based messaging. With the emergence of the mobile web, the ever shortening of attention spans and the need for people to communicate , Twitter has quickly filled that void. Though as with almost everything on the net, who’s making the money?

I encountered an article about the games people play when it comes to project estimations. It reminded me of my experiences as a previous job.

I was gifted in working for a very dynamic company for my first job, as a Test Development Engineer. The job was not particularly challenging, but I had a crash course in playing office politics. One of the constant challenges was determining development estimates and convincing all the relevant parties that it was the right estimate and the time is absolutely needed to create functional software with a minimum level of quality

A typical conversation with my supervisor (who may not always be on my side) and the product engineers would go something like this:

Product Engineer(PE): “We need to develop a new test so that so that we can deliver drives that meet their requirements for their new super, duper performant servers.”

My Supervisor(S): “Right. We’ll need three weeks.”

PE: “But I’ve not told you what the test is going to do.”

S: “Oh, in that case, four weeks. We need to study what the requirements are.”

PE: [Feigned shock] “What?! That’s too long. The customer wants to start delivering to customers in two weeks. I’ve already completed the specs for the test. Here. You just implement.”

S: “In that case. Two and a half weeks.”

PE: [Feigned Anger] “Impossible! We need to keep this account. I don’t care what you have to do, we need to deliver the drives in one week’s time so they can assemble their product.”

S: “You’re really twisting my arm. I’ll have to explain to my people that their being squeezed by you guys. But we’ll do it, for the business’ needs. But I’m doing you a favor. You screwed up. You knew this was coming and we have to cover up your slack.”

PE: “Fine. Just get it done.”

S to Me: [Showing me the specs] “So, how long do you think its going to take?”

Me: “Three days.”

S: “You’ve got two.”

MSDN has just released a lo-band version of its online documentation.

Just go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189009(VS.95,loband).aspx and click on ‘persist lo band’ at the top.

Much much more responsive.

More.

The WorldBank has released its documentation for its new public API. It would be interesting to see what could be develop with the data and content that is available. I would think that the first cut would include visualizers for world poverty/wealth and economy growth. What I’d like to see is a visualization on the impact of the current financial crisis.

My fellow blogger has taken an interest in learning Linq, as have I. As such, we will be trading problems. So, i’m up at service, so here’s the first one, taken from Project Euler.

Problem #1:

If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.

So you’re interested to know whats under the hood of Windows 7, follow this link to read about Engineering Windows 7 by the Windows 7 development team.

The latest podcast on DotNetRocks is up: and its all about the Tools! A few interesting things from this weeks show is Russ Fustino’s toolshed. No, its not about shovels and hos, but rather about all the development tools that you didn’t know!

The areas of interest are Russ’ blog and his Channel 9 shows on new tools.

If that’s not enough, I found another thing from this show that should sweeten the pot, Virtual TechDays! This even is like TechEd, just online and the best part is, is that its FREE! Like in beer. There’s lots of sessions available for download and viewing online.