Programmer's Blog

Programmer's Blog

The Fight for code

Esta página em português

January 29, 2007 - Time runs ahead us

We could say that time run over us. The World changes faster than we can run.
I see users resisting to OpenOffice. Ridiculous! They wanna use the old softwares when the new ones are here! Just few man can see far, and others can't see under their noses.
Who use OpenOffice is actually obsolete. New tecnologies are here. KOffice and online offices (Google Spreadsheets, Ajax Writer, and others) are in the ring.
Only the dinosaurs still use the obsolete comercial software. One day dinosaurs take over the Earth. In the other it are extinct.
Huahuahua!

September 09,2006 - Time is money

Any capability that saves time is always welcome. The main benefit of Programs is that they work for us, and realize the more tasks that we can delegate.
In actual Systems, we just type the data, and the System returns the results.
But the System cannot get the data by itself? Yes, in many cases. One great invention is autocomplete.
Data are repetitive, and with a few portion, the System can "guest" the rest, saving time do user.

July 05, 2006 - The conflict of always: money versus ideal

Lately, talking with friends programmers, one of us was very worried about programmers income, and say that to make money with programming, we need to write code in any language, just obey the boss, programmers doen't make money, who make money is the enterpreneur who intermediate the contracts.
Really, I don't write code for money. I have a job to get money to sustain my family, not because I intend to make much money. As a child, I wake up and go write code, and no one needs to pay for it. I write code just because I like it.

By many years I managed programmer teams, and always manage to make my programmers stronger. Fast I discover that I can transmit knowlege, but the main factor I can't change. The powerful programmers do it for thei r own, just because they like it. Dedication or titles are useless. The real programmer can write any program and can't be stopped or controlled.
We can remember several, but I will say just a few. Starting by our anti-hero, Bill Gates. When he was young, Bill was a powerful programmer, and the Altair Basic is one of the his impressive works. Thousands of hours of obsessive programming, working in paper about a hardware that he didn't have. By the legend, when the program was finally run, no bugs was found. Bill and Paul Allen was assembly and debugging masters. Unfortunately, after, Bill leave programming and start to focus administrative area, then he makes much money, and the programs was never the same.
And how about Will Wright, Maxis founder? Another obcecated. Simcity 1 is an piece of art of programming. Today his simulation games domain the market of non-violent games.
And we can finish talking about Linus Torvalds. By the time he was programming the first beta versions of Linux, he just wake up, write code, eat, write code, and sleep. Today, despite of wife and daughters, he continues spend the most part of his time programming. This guy really don't care about money. And alone, without money, is blowing Microsoft. Just with the power of his code.
If your focus is money, you can't be a real programmer. If you write code just because you like, then you can do the best programs of the World. Money is just a side effect.

June 19, 2006 - Hard life in the third world

Third world is different from first by many ways. Today the Internet democratize the information (but not the bandwidth). But economistic differences are great. Today in Brazil, all kind of professionals, including engineers, software developers, medicians, receive ridiculous salaries, and the enterprising fight over the bankruptcy.

Someone of first world can ask "how it is possible?" The fast answer is: absence of government. The guilt is not only the actual president, but all of the others too. Today, we have the highest tributes and taxes of the world.
The impact for the free software developers is obvious. While finlandese are boring and have all the time to write their code, without problems, the brazilians have to, for use popular brazilian idiomatic expressions, "fight pumpkins with the pigs" and "sell the lunch to buy the dinner".
We'll not depress! Nothing nor no one will stop us to write our code!

March 18, 2006 - Natural evolution of software

The first microcomputer's software did not use the concepts of evolution and version control. The majority of 80's software only has one version, and a few ones have some kind of upgrade.
In the pre-internet era, there was few concurrency, and no reasons to software evolution. A software hold their market for years.
With Internet things change. Each market have several softwares, and they need to evolute to survive.

Today the evolution concept is different about OpenSource and commercial software. commercial software have long cycles of upgrade (one to tree years, usually). The marketing dept. rules the new funcionalities (believe it?), not useful, and create a marketing plan to sell the software.
In Opensource, funcionality are requested by users, and added by developers. The development cycles are much shorter, one month or less. This simple mechanics allow the OpenSource superates the commercial software.

February 11, 2006 - Exception Logging

Since the launch version, my Program Contas Pessoais have an exception logging. All of the exceptions are logged.
I have made tens of Programs, but I was impressed with the variety of possible exceptions. I work in a small network with 70 clients, where the exception variety is much smaller.

The modern object-oriented languages generates complex objects with an infinity variety of possible exceptions. The age let the programmer handle common ones, but an exception log let us handle the uncommon ones and raise the Program stability.

January 9, 2006 - Backup

Finally I have added Backup capability to my Personal Accounting System. It should be law for all database systems. Maybe this capability should be into the development tools.
Is good be prepared to all things in this life. Imagine if your computer crash down now. What data you will miss? Make a copy of all of that now. Don't forget your mail box and your bookmarks.

December 29, 2005 - Hunger of memory

Day by day the modern Systens eat up more and more memory. The old ones can remember the personal computers that have just 1 Kb of RAM... Today the basic computer have 512 Mb. But all this is really necessary? This computers use thousand times more memory that the computers of 15 years ago. They make thousand times more work? Anyone remember Win 95 that runs with 8 Mb? Win XP make thousand times work than Win 95? Or than Win 3.1?
In the truth, the modern object oriented development tools are the great vilains of memory use. Today the objects have tens of properties, and only 10% of this are frequently used. The other 90% basically eats memory. The objects have other objects as properties, then the memory use is mutiplied many times.
Will be other way to do it?

November 14, 2005 - The pain of change

Change always hurts. Sometimes we change by our desire, then we like it. When we are unwilling moved, we suffer.
This concept is real for any kind of system migrations. Migrate to a new version of one system can be painful.
In the modern enterprise, the words "change resistance" are used often. This words are applied to define the natural resistance that any people have to change his workflow according to changes of the enterprise.
The world is changing fast and faster. The only constant is the change. All the people are feeling it. The modern authors of management guide us to use the changes to reach our goals. We have Dr. Spencer Johnson, author of "Who moved my cheese" and Kent Beck, of "Extreme Programming: Embrace the change".
As programmers, is our responsability make the change the smooth as possible. We need effective comunication with the users, reporting the changes, and training when needed. We need to work together with the users to reach a sucessful implementation.

November 5, 2005 - First words

My first words are about the blog concept. In my country (Brazil) people use the word BLOG instead the correspondent portuguese word. Brasilians use english words often. Maybe influence of american movies?
The blogs are a new communication way, where people can publish text that turns instantily available for the whole world. Their utility is wonderful: right now I can read the blogs of the best programmers of the world, knowing their thoughts at real time.