I read a rather enticing post from some other blog entitled 5 Best Things About Being a Developer. This post was enticing in that it was so shill, I could think to do no other thing in response to its content, than write: 5 Most Ridiculous Things About Being a Software Developer.  Apparently, the author had a few of his 5 Best Things happen the day he wrote it  up — how quaint.  These items I’ve scribed below are however, the things that happen to us software developers every day and are not quite as inspirational.

1. Writing Code That Works The First Time Maintaining Code That No One Wants to Exist

You know that script/program/library/object/method that you and your boss both hate.  It rears its ugly head time and again; it ruins perfectly good days.  No matter how many times you try to explain the need to scrap the code involved, no one’s interested.  Its either too time-consuming, too costly, or my favorite line of all time: “It opens us up to too much risk.”   That line should be followed by the Office Space-famed “Riiiight” every time its used.  Imagine how insane it would be if we took that perspective on any other facet of innovation: “Automobiles!?  Oh, no.  We’re sticking with horses.  That opens us up to too much risk!” From a standpoint of business and innovation, and considering this logically (heaven forbid), isn’t it much more risky to have technology running your operation where change is too terrifying a proposition?

I guess what most people don’t realize is risk is success — taking risks is what teaches you things — or as the Zen aphorism goes: The obstacle is the path.

2. Finishing a Project Never Feeling a Project is Finished

Oh, its done alright — just about, anyway — just that last 10%.  Its in the “Shoelace Phase” as I like to call it. The whole shoe is there but that leaves that last part of tying the bow.  Then, quite suddenly, someone not even involved with the shoe realizes something is missing among the myriad not-physically documented requirements, and you, Shoemaker, are back to the beginning.

Most software projects fail in just such a way, as they fail to collect accurate requirements which determine the necessary state of a release candidate.  Worse, if such a final state can be determined, the expectations of that state are rarely appropriately managed, resulting in end-user’s who feel surprised or unsatisfied with the final product; more relevant, a developer who is surprised or unsatisfied with the final product.

3.  Optimization / Re-Factoring / Reducing the # of Lines of Code Bloating / Re-Inventing the Wheel / Needlessly Increasing the Complexity of the Lines of Code

“We need something to get a file from A to B.”  You offer to use a transfer protocol and an existing transfer client.  But, no.  Thats rarely reasonable or robust enough. The route everyone loves is: E-Mail!  So, you bloat your own e-mail client that is a transfer protocol client by the time your done.  Lovely work, I suppose you could mark that under #5  — “Learning Something New and Useful.”

Of course, the only excuse for those kinds of software development sensibilities is a hefty amount of time spent smoking crack.

“Thats going to take re-factoring, perhaps re-design… ” Very common words of the software developer.  How about at least one common response? “Nothing takes a re-design, come on! Just build your more advanced (in other words, your system with a more accurately recorded set of requirements) on top of the old system (the system with nearly no recorded set of requirements that only exists in motion).”  In laymans terms:  Build me a train that runs on eggshell tracks while its on its way to its first stop — I’ll be in the back adding cars, so hurry up.

4. Seeing Marketing For a Product You Work On

As many times as this happens, I can not resist informing whoever is nearby that the entire product came about because a few people scribbled some things down on a napkin and handed them to me on a Monday morning (and told me to “be creative”).  Nor can I ignore the urge to explain precisely how much money they are making off each individual sale and how little they took into account the potential customer. The few times I’ll keep my mouth shut in these types of instances, are when the product is in fact so piss-poor there is no reasonable way to explain my involvement while at the same time absolving myself of having been a part of such worthless engineering.

Any one who sits there cheering proudly is the kind of fan-boy who does that no matter the nature of the product.  For developers, critique is king.

5. Learning Something New & Useful Ignoring Best Practices For Irrational Reasons

Remember all those wonderful things you learned in your first few projects?  Good, cherish them.  The rest of the time you’re going to be told there is little time to make use of them; no time to develop test cases; no time to actually write down requirements; no time to discuss certain aspects of certain features with the actual users; no time to explore that experimental way of filling this need, only the same-ole’ broken ways they’ve learned to accept so far.

Remember the insane look you got when you suggested making a web form to replace executing business processes through specially constructed, shared E-Mail messages? Remember how they told you The Web was just a fad?

For years people have learned from hacking — its the most ancient human art. But, it seems the US has slid so far from its foundation, that now the sheer construction and presentation of information can within itself be considered in some way criminal.

A judge acting as thought-cop told 3 MIT students they were not to discuss their latest hack. Since the halt order, the availability of the information in the presentation has fluctuated. Decius makes mention of the evolving legal manifestation on Memestreams.

I believe information like this ought to be free, and so: a complete form of the content of the halted Defcon presentation is right here (in PDF format). Enjoy.

One day, all our computational abilities will flow, as electricity does, into every home, carrying with it the full force of the entire orchestra of functionality on the Internet — it will cease to be the Internet and become the Grid.

A prediction inspired by this...

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Summer, 2008. You can’t seem to buy a headline that doesn’t remind you that the price of gasoline is at a record high. Everyone is coming out of the wood-work talking Peak oil. Articles stapled to the same headlines fall back on the same, now tiring, discussion about rising demands, shrinking supplies, and the myriad speculative strategies playing out on the open energy market — they talk about anything except solving the problem. Thats because we’re not only at a peak in oil production (which generally drives all other production), we’re at a peak in our production of educated problem solvers. We’ve got a nation of pontificates (at times, myself included).

While Congress questions Big Oil hoping markets can police themselves (lasting it’s tie to capitalism), the opposite only seems obvious and true to consumers and the American people, leaving some of the best analysts wondering, “Is speculation or fundamentals driving the price of oil?” I prefer my question, is it Need or Greed? But, there should be no surprise so little has gotten done, Americans always worry first about who is to blame despite whats opportunities are lost in the meantime — thats the terrifying reality that landed us in Iraq: the need to blame. But, even as we grow nearer to what may amount to the largest energy crisis in American history (perhaps the history of all of our species), and America spirals downward, I realize I have a greater fear, one worse than expensive commodities: my fellow Americans.

Besides the pointless chatter surrounding oil that fills the media — which wastes more energy (in the form of oil, et al) than anything else given its return value — I hear a common notion threaded across the perspective of average Americans: Americans believe George W. Bush, our current President, did all this with a simple policy of “drill and veto.” But, and this is what scares me most, they also believe conversely, that when Bush leaves office these problems will go with him. They believe somehow through Bush’s ties to Big Oil, he was capable of masterminding this global economic shift at the most fundamental level: commodities pricing. Our President alone is not that powerful, thankfully. However, the American people are when they can be united.

So, my poor, undereducated Americans, so down-turned by bad policy, despite your instinct, please forget your dire need to blame. Realize that holding a belief that any such problems will vanish overnight is in fact a form of greed itself, and not need, and is an idea that is plain stupid. We as a society, must exercise the discipline we lacked prior to this, leading us here, in order to find the way out.

Beyond that, personally I feel, George W. Bush, our President, couldn’t mastermind a few elegant English statements in the form of complete English sentences given chair, desk, ink, pen and good reason to do so. And that my friends… is the problem with America, forget oil, we’re at Peak education.

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Peak education is the point in time when the maximum rate of distribution for global education, training, and knowledge is reached, after which the rate of that production and distribution enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, an education crisis may develop because the availability of conventional education, training and knowledge will drop and the population will rise, perhaps dramatically (Hubbert peak theory).

Say hello to my pet rock: Apophis. This last time we talked about him was February 19th, 2007.

So, what is so exciting about a rock? Especially one thats so far away? I don’t think its that this rock is partly iron. In fact, that may be something that makes it seem less exciting. Its not that this rock is humming through space at the breakneck speed of 1145 MPH. Its not the rock’s mass, some 260,000,000,000 kilograms. No, even though this rock is big and its moving ridiculously fast, theres something much, much more interesting and exciting about Apophis: It just might destroy all or most life on Earth. This isn’t exactly the kind of headline one likes to come across, but especially regarding my old friend, Apophis.

In the article below, a 13 year old German school boy revises NASA estimates on the trajectory of Apophis as it relates to Earth-orbiting satellites. Interestingly, according to various media outlets NASA agreed with the young boy. The original [NASA] estimate concluded Apophis would pass Earth in 2029, giving the giant rock a 45,000 in 1 chance of hitting the Earth on its next pass in 2036. Accounted here, the revised estimate by the German boy suggests that Apophis may have a much better chance of impacting with the Earth. The young boy suggests when Apophis passes in 2029, a pass whereby the asteroid will come closer to the Earth than some man-made satellites, that if Apophis were to come into contact with any of those satellites, it would have the much geater chance of 450 to 1, of hitting and devastating our planet in 2036.

Those satellites travel at 3.07 kilometres a second (1.9 miles), at up to 35,880 kilometres above earth — and the Apophis asteroid will pass by earth at a distance of 32,500 kilometres.

Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.

The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely.

Edit: News outlets are now reporting that NASA believes the boy’s sums may have been incorrect.

This study was enlightening, while some of the results were predictable, others were disturbing and shocking.

I don’t know whats funnier, that there is a spike in common sense right after the “D” marked in 2007 on the chart at all, or the story for which “D” marked.

Heres the predictable part, the United States is mored interested in bullshit than common sense. But seriously what the f– is going on over in Canada and Australia?

Stranger still, Seattle is more interested in bullshit than Los Angeles, New York & Washington D.C. I’m almost speechless. Because this also says Washington D.C. searches for common sense more than bullshit. Note to self, contact Google — something is broken with Trends.

From Scienceblogs, a quote I must not let you miss, showing an interesting turn of conversation. Check it out the full beast here. Terse and lovely, the turn goes…

The other thing we evolutionary biologists don’t do enough of, and this stems from the previous point, is make an emotional and moral case for the study of evolution. Last night, I concluded my talk with a quote from Dover, PA creationist school board member William Cunningham, who declared, “Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?”

My response was, “In the last two minutes, someone died from a bacterial infection. We take a stand for him.”

An assumption based in logic, that seems unfortunately too true about our Country is that, in the United States of America, not knowing something makes one popular. This is because, more Americans “don’t know” than those that “do know”,  making ignorance a more socially acceptable attribute at times than intellect.

America, in an age of information, has become a home for a Culture of the Stupid. So says the Washington Post and its sources in a piece titled The Dumbing of America. We have to wonder if this phenomena is the result of people mistaking vision for academic, intellectual or social elitism. Or, if this is just the beginning of an era of Anti-Intellectualism.