Shanti’s Dispatches

This article talks about what makes software projects so hard.

There are a number of reasons.

But the people / books / etc. that all claim to have a monopoly on knowing why software is late, or why their consulting practice / paradigm will solve the problem, are often-times selling a pipe dream.

Next time you hear a horror story about how late a software project is — all you have to know is this:

That’s the “Big Secret” about software dev. Not too complicated.

If Thomas Edison was a software developer, working on his “filament project” for someone:

Dear Edison,

We’re sorry - but your filament project is 200% over budget.

We’re cancelling your project — and truth be told — I never saw the need for any technology more sufficiently advanced than that great classic invention — The Candle, anyway.

Sincerely,
Your PM

Excerpted from “Great Software Failures of the 1800s” by Simon & Schuster

Found this via del.icio.us/popular:

Not to take it too seriously, but my personal take on being a Ruby programmer, well, more of a Ruby + Rails programmer, is not so much about it being a superior language or considering myself superior to developers of any other languages, but rather that I’ve just found a “secret” (not so much lately) way of getting things done faster.

If suddenly a new framework for Erlang, VBScript, or heck, Blub, appeared that would make development incredibly efficient on that platform, many Rubyists would definitely take a look (that’s how 99% of us came to Ruby in the first place).

Mythical (but possible) blog post:

Hey — have you checked out the new VBScript on Rollerblades framework? I know it’s hard to believe, but I get about 10x as much done!

When All Else is Commoditized, Optimize for Time

I remember when a professor back in school first introduced the appeal of commoditization of complimentary services to your own. IBM and Linux is the quintessential example. Why would IBM want to commoditize the OS market (by investing heavily in Linux), when they already make a few of their own?

Now it seems normal, with Sun GPLing Java, but a few years ago many analysts were scratching their heads as to why IBM would want to invest $1 billion in Linux and open source.

Because now IBM can sell consulting services @ $250 per hour, while the cost of their OS and server software (used to deploy production systems), remains virtually nil. A $1 bln investment is pretty cheap for a rock-solid OS, especially when you’ve got $20 billion a quarter in revenues.

If you have any doubts about this, talk to a small business owner who’s buying SQL Server and Windows 2003 Server licenses because they decided to build out their platform on MS. (I had the pleasure of doing this recently - business owners are not happy about paying more for a licensing fee than the actual hardware!)

With servers and bandwidth being incredibly inexpensive these days, while OSes, database software and web framworks remain free (that is, if you use the right one *wink*), the only thing left to optimize for is developer time.*

* I do have a vested interest here. But I challenge you to try out an inexpensive Indian outsourcing firm (commoditized developer time) and report back your results. I haven’t heard too many success stories yet.

A friend who’s attending the php|tek conference said there was a bit of Ruby bashing going on. Of course, he reports as well, Java is feeling a much bigger brunt of the heat.

I’ve decided to officially stop saying negative things about my fellow Java/J2EE brethren.

Seeing articles like this, make me realize that saying bad things about Java/J2EE, is like kicking a defenseless puppy while he’s down.

It just isn’t right, and chances are, the usage of Java in many enterprise shops was carved in stone some 3-5 odd years ago after a middle-manager read about its cross-platform benefits in a Delta Airlines in-flight magazine. (oops, there I go again!! my bad…)

I’m just sorry, guys. Sorry.

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

- John Lennon, Imagine

David feeds some trolls in his response to this thought-leader’s post on why Ruby isn’t Enterprise-ready.

DHH - haven’t you learned not to pick fights with anyone who refers to himself as an “industry thought leader” on their blog?

There’s a whole system of accreditation that vets people, who umm, type the words “industry thought leader” into the description field on their blogspot.com blog.