Sunday, May 11, 2008

Right vs. Right


Somewhere, deep in the bowels of a florescent-lit cubical farm, a battle wages on. A battle that has been fought since the dawn of computer programming. A battle of..."right vs. right"?

This sums up the approach that Michael Lopp, better known as "Rands" in the blogosphere, takes to software engineering. In his book Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, the battle he describes is one of Incrementalists vs. Completionists--those who want to get things done quickly verses those who want to get things done correctly. Both mindsets are equally "right" in Lopp's eyes. It's the balanced combination of the two that makes for a solid software team.

Lopp takes this even-handed, "ying/yang" approach throughout his book, which is mostly made up of posts from his blog, Rands in Repose. As with the incrementalists and completionlists, his characterizations of office personality types are colorful, insightful, and even-handed. In the chapter entitled Meeting Creatures, Lopp takes you on a wild safari, describing the different kinds of people you'll encounter around the conference table at work. These meetings, he describes, are a rich ecosystem made up of unique, but interdependent personalities. You never have any idea what a "Curveball Kurt" is talking about, for example, which is why you need a "Translator Tim" to help out.

In regards to writing style, each one of the short, thirty-four chapters are written in a light, conversational tone that's easy to digest. Being a collection of blog posts, it's easy to pick up and put down without getting involved like you might with a novel.

So, the book is great, but it should be noted that people may find it hard to relate to some of Lopp's stories. Lopp works in the fast-paced, high-energy Silicon Valley, where startups come and go like contestants on American Idol. This can make for some quite stressful times. He talks, for example, about The Monday Freakout which describes the deluge of yelling and screaming that comes pouring out of a project lead after a weekend spent worrying about the project. I think it's safe to say that not everyone works in an atmosphere like this. Many readers may have a job that, while engaging, doesn't keep them stressing over the weekend.

But the bottom line is that no matter where you work, if your job is somehow related to software development, you can learn something from this book. Read on! It's the "right" thing to do.

Monday, May 5, 2008

ThumbThru released

I just recently finished putting together a small utility I had written a while ago for some websites I had designed during college. I spent a few days cleaning it up and turning it into something generic that anyone could download and start using right away. I've called it...**drumroll**

ThumbThru


It's a simple photo gallery utility coded entirely in Javascript and written in such a way so that it takes as little time as possible to get up and running. It's a lot like the galleries you'll find on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website--in fact, you could say that's where I got my "inspiration".

Some things I learned when writing this:

  • How to create a Javascript class

  • The difference between the GPL and the LGPL (I've licensed it under the LGPL, btw)

  • The fact that Ant can create ZIP files (pretty cool!)


All future blog posts perhaps...?

Anyway, feel free to download ThumbThru and give it a try! Or at least check out the live demo!

Friday, May 2, 2008

I understand you

So, I go to check my Gmail account like I do on a regular basis. But when I logged in, I noticed something different.

There was this red bar above my inbox:



It turns out that I did indeed have Firebug (a Firefox extension) enabled! And I wouldn't have known it otherwise. Google probably decided to include this feature after getting complaints from users who didn't realize that it was their own stupid fault their mail was loading slowly. Or maybe Google decided to include it out of the kindness of their hearts. Either way, it's pretty cool to see a huge corporation that certainly doesn't need do something like this, take the time to do it. They could have buried the issue somewhere deep inside a FAQ page and left it at that.

In the short-term, spending time to include something that only benefits a small minority of users a small minority of the time is a waste of money. Some developer might have spent a day designing this feature. Google's stock price certainly won't rise the next day because of it. He should have been working on Adsense or something!

But it's the longer term impact that is affected by small enhancements like this. What this is saying isn't "turn off Firebug". It's saying "I know you want to get to your email quickly and Firebug may interfere with that." Or more simply:

"I understand you."

When another product of equal or better quality comes around, if you've been regularly reminding your users that you understand them, they'll be more likely to stick with you during tough times.