Battle of the Browser

11.04.07

Filed Under: technology with 0 Comments

indeed, there is much ado about what when it comes to browser market share and it does seem that IE and Firefox dominate the limelight. Anyways, while they sort themselves out, i was prompted to give Opera a try. The result: pleasant. It’s light and responsive and, well, refreshing. No pun intended :) Overall, “neat” [to borrow an americanism], in all senses of the word.

now it’s just transferring all those stored passwords.. hehe

Overtime

04.04.07

Filed Under: opinion, programming with 0 Comments

the “O” word popped up today and i can recall reacting rather negatively to the concept. having recognised my emotional response :), i’m trying to gather my thoughts so i can examine the role of overtime in a production environment with reasonable judgement. and in scanning through many articles, my reaction is more accurately against planned overtime, than overtime in general.

Indeed, when a project starts planning for overtime consciously, there are bigger issues that will lead to some demise, sooner or later. Something’s always gotta give. An interesting extension to this concept is subconsciously, or even unconsciously, planned overtime.

Subconscious planning is probably based on a mix of the following [and not limited to this list]:

You’re subconsciously factoring in a hero-effort *somewhere* along the lines, and you know it. Maybe you’re just not stopping for long enough to be upfront about it? You have the experience, you know about chaos, and you really should be more accurate by now. But you override sound reason. And that’s where unconsciously planned overtime differs. You didn’t know at all that what you were planning would involve a super hero push to try and rectify the quickly deteriorating project. Basically, inexperience in the domain you’re managing.

And i guess that’s how software got it’s reputation for being so overtime-driven. Unconscious planning in the early days was due to not knowing just how hard software [your project] really can be. But we’ve learned that and moved on from there. We have the statistics and collective experiences of many to testify: overtime kills. So, today, if you’re putting in overtime, you got to ask: what kind of planned overtime are you dealing with?

Of course, there’s always gonna be unplanned overtime. Power failures, natural disasters, trauma, sudden massive economic instability and similar left-field events are not usually factored into _any_ project. But they also don’t occur every day, or every week, even every month. These are rare occassions. Not your run-of-the-mill experiences that justify a demand for working overtime.

So where does overtime fit in, apart from natural disasters? For me, it would be when the team decides they want to do something _extra special_. Something out of the ordinary to take advantage of a window of opportunity or close a critical gap. And if your software is always full of critical gaps… :) need i say more? It’s that extra burst of special energy that contributes significant value, and therefore requires that extra special commitment.

New Territory

16.03.07

Filed Under: .net, technology, ubuntu with 0 Comments

for a .net “junkie”, migrating technology skills can be quite daunting- well, that is for me at least. after too long a delay, i finally decided to start shifting some of my stuff across to Linux. i like the community drive behind Ubuntu and so… here i am. I guess there are lots of reasons for finally getting going with this… thing is, i’ve always enjoyed having an eclectic knowledge of sorts about technology in general and after so long into .net, it feels like i have an ecelectic .net grasp of all things microsoft. not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just not what i _really_ wanted :) anyways, it’s also hard to be technology-agnostic and objectively equipped to recommend a strategy you can actively be involved in when the last line of Java code you wrote was… erm… *then*. and as great as some of the .net stuff is [and 3.0 and upcoming LINQ… oooohhhh] i can’t help but think i could be _selling out_ if i don’t make a decent effort to stay even half-decently current across the board. now if i can get my wireless card to work, i could start blogging from my new desktop :)

Ideas

06.03.07

Filed Under: technology with 0 Comments

sometimes, the timing of an idea is more interesting than the actual idea. sometimes both are equally fascinating. viral communication aside, i did find it quite interesting that these 3 posts

should appear within days of each other. and yes, some are inspirations for others. but personally, the timing was interesting since i just started feeling a little overwhelmed by the plethora of technologies available right now.

just within .Net alone, there’s just so much that is going on it’s dang difficult to find the time to investigate the possibilities adequately. and that’s without even considering Ruby. and technologies aside, what about all the tools available within the confines of a “straight-forward” project? and then there’s the existing technology and the way it moves forward. and you really don’t want to specialize _too much_…

*shew*

Requirements

05.03.07

Filed Under: programming with 0 Comments

it’s not just software requirements that suffer the problem of being vague, open-ended and non-descript. anytime we want to express anything we require, we speak a kind of short-hand which is just something we’re terribly used to, and rely on, in everyday communication.

Starting with birth, we express our requirements in one word “Mommy” meaning anything from food to nurturing to play. We grow up expressing one word “food” to mean anything from a sandwich to an ice cream.

What do you feel like eating? Mmm… Food :)

So unless we’re particularly motivated, and capable, we express our requirement in sufficient detail so as not to leave any room for interpretation. Like a food craving.

What do you feel like eating? Tuna sandwich on wholewheat with lettuce and onion.

Software requirements fall into the same communication trap. When the product manager has “an” idea of what is required, but is not particularly motivated, or capable, of expressing that requirement, it comes off in short-hand, leaving many gaps in the interpretation. On the other hand, when the same is particulalry motivated, and/or capable, the requirement usually comes through in one detailed description requiring very little formal “Requirements Gathering” interaction. It’s understood with accuracy. Job requirements are much the same.

Everyone wants a developer who:
has at least n years experience, is motivated, can work independantly, can work under pressure, can communicate both technically and commercially, is a team player, delivers on time, understands patterns, knowledge of databases, fill-in-the-technology [related to the position]. thing is, these specs don’t describe what the company actually wants. All that it communicates is that the company [or recruiters] have “an” idea of what they’re looking for and are prepared to shop around and see what they can find. And then very rarely, there are companies who post up their requirements in such a way that it communicates what you really need to know about the going position:
company culture and problem domain. Knowing that up front saves a lot of communicating. i guess that’s why you need to check out the website. but even that just reflects the marketing department’s image of the corporate and not what’s really going on :p

Perception of Control

05.02.07

Filed Under: agile, programming with 0 Comments

one of the biggest challenges facing any lead position [particularly in an agile domain, but not solely within that domain] is wrestling for control. the processes, frameworks, tools and values are established in order that some kind of control may be exerted over the chaos. and in a position where you are required to lead, you are perceived as controlling, to a greater or lesser degree, those systems. a kind of lion tamer, if you will. the tricky bit though is not to buy into the perspective that you are controlling anything. once you do bite, settle in for a fight. how so?

you have a great architecture all planned [or semi-planned]. you’ve been collaborating on it for some time and you [your team visionaries] release it for implementation. inevitably, it doesn’t go strictly according to plan. and that’s ok, as long as what does get implemented is not a deadly wound, right? likewise, you have an iteration all neatly planned, but once it gets started Mr. Murphy makes his appearance. and suddenly you need to deal with unplanned, _urgent_ stories. from requirements gathering to release, when you are tasked with leading any of the above, it’s _hard_ to control it. and depending on your personality, ethics, team-size, professionalism, culture, your reaction will fall somewhere between the extremes of HeartAttack and Whatever. Or for the more detailed, see The Stress Continuum.btw, this also applies to any lead position in commerce. any business manager, CEO, financial director- they can all fall into the same trap. my disclaimer here is that i am nowhere near close to any sort of expert in commerce, but i have seen remarkably similar behaviour where the issue of control is concerned.

now control is very difficult to get right because of the linear mindset we have engrained. inputs and outputs, objectives and outcomes, incentives and goals; all work well. defining them is cognitively sound, striving for them is rational, even good. getting to them is difficult. and it almost seems that the moment we think have control of the system, we lose it. we use terms like “hit a bump, snag or hitch”. we may even resort to phrases like “sabotaged” or “hijacked”. but that perception of losing control is more likely a result of something completely ordinary. ie, not always an intentful diabolical plot to thwart your efforts. even if paranoia is a virtue :)

and why the linear midset does not work is because we are not strictly dealing with a linear system in anything that we collaborate on. life is not linear. yes, we’d love to ignore the impact of home on work and vice-versa. it’s just not realistic. yes, we’d love to tell people to leave their problems at home, and vice-versa. you’re blinded. and don’t let something like a terrorism impact on this delivery. when you come to work, you work. you leave all that behind, right? mmm…. of course, we do recognise major events. particulalry, the ones close to home. and there’s also good reason why we simply can’t factor all those things in to our planning. it’s just too much. we’d never get started with anything. and we also have to draw lines about what we can _allow_ to affect us, for the sake of moving along. but truth be told, things completely unbeknown to us wrestle against our perceived control of any system.

so how to combat this? abandon your perceived control. recognise you have no real control and focus on influencing the system. a leader, and we can look to world leaders here for examples, doesn’t control a nation, or even group. the ones that do we recognise as cults. great leaders influence. and since this is not about morals, but about successfully achieving, we can ignore the good and bad when it comes to using the word “great”. if you can but exert the right type and amount of influence, you will probably achieve far more than when you try control.

architecture. don’t try and control it. influence your team to get it right. that involves education, imparting values and a lot of rhetoric. process, agile or not. don’t control it, again, influence it. gathering requirements and planning the iteration likewise requires a lot of influence to get it right. how do you stop unplanned, _urgent_ stories from distracting your attention 2 days into an interation? you can not control it. but if you have influenced your sales team and product managers correctly, they’re less likely to interrupt. but that’s not to say they won’t ever do it :) how do control a junior developer from not writing tests? you can’t. but you can influence them to. and so every situation you’re faced with when leading something is never about control. if you think your job is to control it, you’re more likely to be frustrated than not.

so leading any position where control is perceived, your first task in accepting the role is to recognise that you have no control. even if others expect you to. there too, you can influence expectations to a greater understanding that life is non-linear. we don’t live in a box. we don’t achieve outputs based on linear inputs. there’s too much beyond our control [and influence] to even try cater for, so we don’t. yet, in some way, we do try cater. just differently to what we might expect would work.

Institutionalisation

18.01.07

Filed Under: agile, programming with 0 Comments

it’s been a looong break {and good}, but getting back into the stream, one toe at a time. And as i venture forth into what is commonly known as the “new?” year, i keep coming up against this theme of “institutionalisation”. It’s almost tangible in every domain, which is no surprise, since it takes place at our begging. In fact, more than begging for it, we expend a large amount of effort to reach an acceptable level of “institutionalisation”.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutionalization labours more on the concept than i wish to for the purposes of this post, but does provide some interesting insight. In particular, “individuals who work within large established organisations can become socialised into organizational values and norms, and values and norms may become institutionalized”. Many companies actively strive to achieve this kind of congruence throughout their organisation at some level, since it will apparently promotes productivity through shared ideals, like-mindedness and co-operativity. Not to mention all the fluffy feel good factors which enable people just to work together in harmony. But does it reach a point where it becomes bad?

Neutrally, institutionalisation is just the embedding of those values. Negatively, it is the impact which that embedding has on the individual’s ability to function outside the structured environment. Positively, it is the culmination of effort in bringing people of varied personalities together such that they might work happily side-by-side.

Religion, politics, sportsfans- any social setting actually- all display some degree of institutionalisation. The extremes within each social environment tend to display the highest degree of institutionalisation, but only as a trend. Even groups which try and balance the extremes, if they play that game for too long and hard, achieve a level of institutionalisation in which they cannot operate within any extreme environment- if only for a season. Is that really so bad?

Then we look at the values embedded into our processes, our commercial ambitions, our societal goals and ideologies and how we champion them. We look at who champions them. Why do we support them? At what point do we stop supporting them? Do we champion something ourselves and why? And when we start scratching, we realise we want to achieve some sort of institutionalisation somewhere, but ironically, with really good intentions. [Ethics and morals aside, even if you’re downright evil, you’ll believe your intentions to be good] So, if we start something out with “good” intentions, can it really become bad?

The answer to that depends on many things i guess- again, more than i need to delve into. Let’s assume then that some people are happy to say “yes” and some people, happy with “no” and that some of their reasons and assumptions are valid. And some of them displaying clear characteristics as a result of institutionalisation. And some are happy to agree to disagree while others not. Sounds rather innocuous, doesn’t it?

But it’s exactly that boring mix of responses which we need to embed ourselves in. We need to be prepared from time to time to say both “yes” and “no”. We need to keep challenging the kind of institutionalisation we’re headed toward, without buying into it while at the same time believing it with all your heart and pushing into it :) Shucks, half my brain just went on strike!

So, how exactly do we achieve that… ?

::shrug:: i think we just do, at least some of us do. From marriage, to social group, to local church, to sports club, to company, to development process- where ever you got people doing something together, you need to radically push to entrench the values and norms you believe in, all the while challenging them every step of the way. I don’t know of an easier way. But then again, it’s not supposed ot be “easy”, yet .. strangely .. it can be.

WT? #3

23.12.06

Filed Under: php, programming with 0 Comments

So, just when i thought i had seen it all… this is the REQUEST, as captured by Fiddler.
Yes, you read that right… the SWF builds the request and sends it through to the web server; in plain text.
(i’ve modified the actual contents of the SQL, naturally)

POST /flashsql.php?id=106 HTTP/1.1

= QUERYSTRING ====
 id=106

= BODY ====
 host=NNN.NNN.NN.NN
 sql_=SELECT DISTINCT( id ), name, filename FROM table LEFT
JOIN table2 ON ( id = id ) LEFT JOIN
table3 ON ( id = id ) LEFT JOIN table4 ON
( id = id ) LEFT JOIN table5 ON ( id = id ) WHERE id IN(155,150,52,149,134,133,76) AND
typeId=9 ORDER BY id
 dat=databasename
5 tables, no less and a database name. And a file on the server that happily accepts any SQL for execution. Oh, and this was an e-commerce website.

They were notified and they have subsequently made things a lot more secure.

WT? #2

23.12.06

Filed Under: .net, programming with 0 Comments

This was a commercial online system- tried to make a reservation and…

 webexception.PNG

WT? #1

23.12.06

Filed Under: .net, programming with 0 Comments

This last year, we have uncovered numerous websites with some severe flaws. And sometimes there are fairly _large_ websites where you’d think they’d have more professional skill available to avoid the kind of things we end up seeing…

And i don’t think ca$h (lack of) is the issue- in fact, i supect that sometimes there is more than sufficient being invested. The resultant product and runtime errors that crop up are, well… for the reader to discern. The names have been hidden to protect the embarassed.

First up: TheBrowserBackButton
This is a large university’s website. I was browsing through the Maths and Computer Science areas when i clicked on my browser’s back button:

Back Button

Maybe this was intentional? It sure does help getting a call from the help desk and they can tell you exactly which line of code is causing the problem :)

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