The House of David

Friday, November 13, 2009

Why your project didn't get done on time

Among the programmer's least enjoyable tasks is managing expectations for time taken on project X. This is the difference between his estimate (not necessarily billable time), and the time it takes to get X to the client's desk.

I have created an outline for the snags which have tripped me up over the past 13+ years of slinging code. I am not here to bitch about my job, which I love; nor about my boss and clients, who have all been more than fair. The examples given here are not specific to any one place of work (but there is perhaps a bias toward Web development).

Initial requirements are sometimes optimistic or else aren’t set down until programming is underway.
1. This happens when the project requires a coding method I had not yet tried. I did not always know Javascript for instance.
2. Much of this time is taken up writing the code and seeing if it has any possibility of working.
The requirements can get clarified in the midst of development.
1. This happens when I read the requirements literally, and then do the demo, and then the client points it out.
2. If the exact verbiage wasn't implied in the spec, then we can request an extension - but sometimes things seem obvious to the client that don't to the programmer. ("You wanted an UNDO option?")
The requirements might not have addressed a problem I run across while coding and/or testing.
1. I generally send mail to team lead when this occurs. But it often requires input from a client.
Existent codebase may be complex.
1. In SQL there is always at least one variable that has to follow a lengthy algorithm of rules - and is the reason you're running it on a 5-terabyte server in the first place. (If you're in sales, it's pricing.)
2. In the site itself this happens with the pages which load conditionally.
  1. The role of the login affects what is available.
  2. Subclasses of the page: some fields might be relevant for some choices and not for others. e.g. if you are Canadian, your town is in a "province" and if you are American, a "state".
  3. Code behind here has to be conditional too. If I’m asked to fix something for X, all that code for Y and Z is distracting.
3. This happens where there is a mix of client and server functionality: Javascript versus ASP.
4. This happens where controls are added dynamically.
5. This happens where the web server demands session state (“memory”): preview option, before client saves it.
6. Changing one thing here often ripples across the site.
7. We could fix these to make them more supportable… but that won’t improve the user experience straightaway. Also, “don’t rock the boat”.
A request may depend on some other vendor.
1. Microsoft doesn’t always help. (Get out! I hear the geeks saying...)
  1. Dropdown listboxes do not allow field concatenation. As a result I have to write code to work around this – which subverts my object model and makes it complex.
  2. Checkbox lists are dreadful and I have to write code to disable a checkbox, strikethrough the text, popup tooltips, tick the entries the database says I should tick…
2. Sometimes we buy software that helps out. Sometimes a freeware option exists.
  1. A new language to learn, and code sometimes has to be reengineered to make it compatible.
Testing.
1. The programmer “cannot be the judge of his own case”.
2. The manager has other projects and this delays her ability to react.

Labels: algorithms, apology

posted by Zimri on 16:40 | link |

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Bad dog!

Clearly I was wrong about Joseph Cão. He's not a vulnerable Republican trolling for RNC support; he's an unprincipled sellout.

UPDATE 11/12: If proof be needed, this cur has "said he voted for the legislation only after seeing that Democrats had the 218 votes needed for passage".

Labels: apology, enemies, republicans

posted by Zimri on 10:00 | link |

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Fort Hood

[started at 4 PM, bumped] ~~Several~~ people dressed as military have shot up troops at Fort Hood. Death toll is at 12 and rising.

This isn't a sniper up on a clock tower picking people off, or some grunt tossing a grenade into a tent (despicable as those actions are). This is a premeditated attack, ~~with several people involved,~~ and timed perfectly. In addition the perpetrators had to have had military training to get this close. MSNBC says it was a Major who was the ringleader. (h/t, Ace at first - then Drudge.)

This is designed to weaken trust between soldiers and their officers, and to discourage volunteers for the Armed Forces.

Is the date significant - the day of Guy Fawkes? Was it an anarchist? I don't know how much credence to put on the "Arabic sounding name". I think it bears waiting to see what happened. The story is "developing".

Whoever did it, and whyever, it was an act of war.

Pray for the victims.

Ensure it doesn't happen again.

UPDATE 4:13: Malik Hassan, a convert to Islam? Ugh. Jihad successful. I'm starting to get angry.

UPDATE 4:47: Yeah, there were a bunch of posts earlier which were more general and/or lighthearted. I'd written them earlier, before 4 PM. I'm bumping this one to the top of the queue.

UPDATE 5:02: No-one's walked back the name yet. It's distinctive. The name "Hassan" refers to 'Ali's son the Shi'a prince and in its natural habitat it is, still, Shi'ite. A name like "Malik", without the "Abdal" in front of it, implies kingship. Shi'ites until about 1979 or so didn't have a tradition of feeling powerful, and not really until very recently in Iraq; you wouldn't see these names Malik and Hassan together in the Near East. Add to that "Nidal" (Abu Nidal...?). I think we're dealing with a ~~Black Muslim~~ someone who has hated us for a long time, and ~~turned~~ Muslim ~~as a manifestation of that hate~~.

UPDATE 5:08: ~~If it sounds like I'm calling Charles Johnson a worthless pile of slime, that's because I am.~~

UPDATE 5:10: I see that the media is insulting Killeen and generally refusing to name the beast. Heckuva job, guys.

UPDATE 5:38: They released his picture... so the end of my 5:02 post was a jump-to-conclusions mat. Corrected. Sincere apologies. I'm leaving the thing up there as a monument to my carelessness.

UPDATE 6:57: My fallback idea was Baathist from Syria or Iraq. Turns out he was Syrian. Not a convert. Mind you THAT mistake wasn't my fault. I think whoever started the "convert" meme was thinking along the same lines I was - that pious Muslims don't prefer the name "Malik". Unless they become pious...

UPDATE 11/10: After this much time, no-one's found any other shooters, so I'm overdue for the correction.

I'm also trying to figure out if I owe Charles Johnson an apology for insulting him on account of his comment that the shooter's name might signify a non-Muslim black man. While totally bogus, and arguably racist; at the time I was thinking he might be a Muslim black man, which was about half as bogus but equally racist (c.f. my grovel at 5:38). Johnson has since corrected his stance to be more in line with the facts; although he's not come to full terms with those facts, that it was not just an Awlaki jihad but a victory for the Umma.

Labels: apology, enemies, islam, race

posted by Zimri on 17:10 | link |

I retract my vote for TX2009#9

I oppose eminent-domain for the purpose of revenue-grabbing. I don't oppose eminent-domain where someone has bought some land, and then the government finds out they need it for truly social purposes.

The classic example would be railways and highways. People settle all over the place. Later on, other people will need to get from one point to another, and despite the best efforts of city planners there is always some old coot who has set up his shack in the middle of things. There's not much the government can do other than to say, "here's some cash to get to another location, now get out".

In that spirit, there's the Gulf Coast. Says Janus, it's all "public". "Public" is a Newspeak expression which means that the State of Texas and, in some cases, USG are sovereign over it. Anyone who "owns" property along the Coast does not own it; he's got a certificate of tenancy (whatever the deed and title documents pretend). That gives the State certain rights.

I am fine with all that. This is an unstable coast; it is subject to tides and hurricanes and, depending on the mood of the Caribbean Plate, tsunamis. The various coastline governmental levels absolutely should be responsible for the coastline. The State of Texas also has an interest in suppressing the population there, so that said population doesn't clog the roads whenever the latest Ike or Rita threatens inland cities like Houston. The Gulf Coast is inherently a bad bet for "private property owners".

I have no hard criteria, yet, for how far this eminent-domain principle should hold elsewhere. I would extend it to San Andreas and other obvious tectonic faults. State-regulated watersheds, for the purpose of efficient water conservation, have a proven track record in New York State; I think I would borrow their model for the drier mountains West (especially as more people settle there). Tornado zones, though, I wouldn't accept as the State's excuse for a land-grab. Anyway at this point I know what I am and I am "haggling over the price", as Churchill might put it. I do reserve the right to haggle.

And I reserve the right to admit where I've haggled for too high a price. TX2009#9 was a frivolous recreational measure, "irrelevant" in the words of Janus. But against Janus I hold that in principle, private property shouldn't hold on the Coast. I voted "Nay" on it but I wish I had voted "Yea". Oh well, teach me to wait for the last minute before learning the issues; and at least it passed anyway.

Labels: apology, constitution, liberty

posted by Zimri on 16:31 | link |

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I Gots A Peace Prize: A Review

I'm hearing a lot of Steve Crowder out in the right-wing circuit. I first heard of him from a shambolic "We Didn't Start The Fire" parody (at FrontPageMag.com, although I don't see it there now). Then I caught him right here at the 3 July Tea Party (his wit n' wisdom - "Obama looks like a photo negative of Alfred E Newman"). Now I find that Mr Crowder has "dropped", as they say, a new video: the rap I Gots A Peace Prize.

It's instructive to compare Crowder's parodies with those of Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al's "Germs" derived from several Nine Inch Nails songs. One does a style parody of a charged genre for one reason - to compare an example of misbehaviour (in the new lyrics) to the pathologies underlying the original (in the shared tune). When Weird Al did "Germs", he was mocking paranoia in the style of frequently-paranoid Trent Reznor. With "Trigger Happy", he was mocking careless gun owners to the tune of a carefree surfer melody.

Crowder's video was gangsta rap. Weird Al has done gangsta rap too: in all cases, to compare his real target to the urban underclass. "All About The Pentiums" and then "White & Nerdy" both lampooned computer-nerd braggarts. Crowder, then, is saying that Obama's Nobel is ghetto. His video is a similitude like Limbaugh's.

Crowder's video is more violent than Yankovic's nerd parodies. Crowder waves a pistol around; Yankovic, as far as I remember, didn't. This brings up primal emotions of rage and terror in Crowder's audience. Crowder also chooses to rap in a Black rapper cadence; and not in the conversational tones of Vanilla Ice and the Bloodhound Gang, nor in the street-brawler snaps of Eminem and the Beastie Boys.

~~As a result I'm not sure who is Crowder's target.~~Crowder is going after the Black community as a whole. If the attempt was to attack Obama as a poser, then he would have done better to rap like a white guy (or to choose another genre entirely). ~~If the attempt was to go after the Obama supporters in the Black community, then the attempt was misguided~~ - surfing around turns up that most Black Obamists on the internet are NOT jumping up and down with pride, but mildly embarrassed by the Prize. But Blacks on blogs are not a representative sample of the average Black person; three quarters of Black population believe that Obama deserved this prize. (h/t, JammieWearingFool.)

Crowder has talent as a satirist and is technically skilled as a musician~~; but his method is distracting~~. Rating: ~~2/5~~4/5

UPDATE 10/27: Having done the research, I find that Crowder had the correct intuition about Black psychology - and I didn't. I apologise to him. I have boosted his video's rating accordingly. Crowder is, like Rush, raising an impolite truth. Satire is not supposed to be polite; it's just supposed to be accurate. That is what Crowder has accomplished here.

Labels: apology, conservatives, race

posted by Zimri on 20:27 | link |

Monday, October 12, 2009

... and then they came for me

I've had to deliver a few apologies over the weeks. (What the hell - decades.)

If theorem T seems objectively true, even if T has been demonstrated to the limit, there sometimes remain people who still won't see the truth of T - to a part of me, these people have ceased to be people. They have become a problem: a mathematical singularity, or at any rate an algorithm gone NP-complete.

I have to remember to step back and to remember that these people are, still, human. More human than me, a humanitarian would argue. I've shared my worries on that, over five years ago. Nothing much changes in human nature.

What might change is how I deal with the buggy software in my own head rather than fantasising about deleting everyone else from my life.

There is, or was, a large-ish sociology experiment on the 'Web, run by liberal jazz musician Charles Johnson. After 9/11/2001, he developed a community called "Little Green Footballs" - and then over the past couple years he placed ever more onerous restrictions upon that community.

One of his little roadblocks he set up in our little lizard maze: he declared for tyrant Zelaya in Honduras. At this point I wrote up an essay proving that L.G.F. was "anti-conservative". I figured I'd be quickly banned, or (much less likely) Charles would post something to the effect "yeah; deal with it".

Nope. First the post lingered around and attracted "down-dings". I picked up 10. And Johnson's final comment to me, announcing that he was terminating my account there, got about 2 or 3 "up-dings".

I'd become a problem to that community, and the problem was solved - to rejoicing all around.

It was about what I deserved.

Labels: apology, lgf, misanthropy, personal

posted by Zimri on 20:29 | link |

Sunday, October 11, 2009

"Affirmative action", in Norwegian

Some are calling Obama's Nobel Peace Prize "affirmative action" - RedState and Sailer come to mind. Over at the blogmocracy I had tried to debunk that, and concluded that this canard was an expression of racial resentment.

I'd forgotten about Rigoberta Menchú.

The Prize committee has, in several occasions, (quoting Sailer) "demonstrate[d] how much white people long to give money, fame, and power to a black guy who meets minimum standards of presentability, regardless of his lack of accomplishments." For Europe, read "someone reminding them of the post-colonial Third World" instead of "black guy"; if Obama was actually Black, like Harold Ford Jr, I doubt he'd have won anything in Norway. But the impulse behind the Nobel here is analogous to American affirmative-action, and I can't rule out that it contributed.

So, belated apologies to Erickson and Sailer.

Labels: apology, obama, race, sailersphere

posted by Zimri on 19:48 | link |

Monday, March 29, 2004

The ancient value of the unborn

I just visited two sites, each of which linked to Allen Brill's blog "The Right Christians"; again, a blog I had never read before. One was from yet another blog I'd never read before: "The Buck Starts Here", who's now being Instalanched. The other was from one of my daily fixes, Protein Wisdom, who is no fan of TRC.

Anyway, in light of the recent Senate vote, TRC gave us the "Obscure Bible passage of the day":

"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." Exodus 21:22-25 (NRSV)

Brill points out "The facts could hardly be more on point for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act." True, that. I applaud this man for giving us a relevant Scripture quote.

But Brill also claims that whether the Torah is claiming the fetus is human or not is "complex and ultimately, inconclusive". Begging his pardon, that is only because he is asking the wrong question of this passage. The Torah isn't about human rights, but human obligations. That is why it is called "Torah" - "Law" - and not "Bill of Rights". The Torah cannot apply to creatures unable to comply with it (or else we would be prosecuting wolves for eating wild boars!). The Torah applies to us sentient humans: in this case, whether we have a right to kill the fetus.

The Torah makes three points here that are relevant to believing Jews (and Christians and Muslims). First is that the fetus has value ~~of a human baby~~ (which is not the same as "human rights"!). Second is that the person who harms one ought to pay a penalty. Third - and here be the controversy - this penalty ought to be such that will satisfy the bereft household.

The pericope associates the ruling with the lex talionis. Now, the lex talionis typically kicks in when there has been personal damage done, up to murder; hence "life for life" even here. Since that law only limits revenge attacks, rather than ending them, the ancients had as of Torah-time already attempted to replace that system with what we Anglo-Saxons call the weregeld, literally "man-money". Some judge would weigh the victim's value to society, the heinousness of the crime, and the ability of the murderer to pay; come up with a suitably ruinous fine; and get that thug to pony up - to someone. Therefore: the Torah treats the fetus as a type of ~~baby~~valuable for the household.

The Torah decided that the legal father stands in for said household. This is because the Torah assumes that the father and mother are the most aggrieved parties, after the baby; and, in good Bronze Age fashion, that the father is in the best position to use the money in the service of his house. This Torah passage therefore must assume that the woman is married and that the baby is the husband's. (This has other implications for the pro/antiabortion debate, which are irrelevant here...)

Since we no longer live in the Bronze Age, we satisfy the berieved with means other than eye-for-eye or Weregeld. We have a justice system, which takes into account society's interest in keeping criminals from committing more crimes. Those of us who hope to have children just plain don't want to put up with those who are willing and able to murder the babes of pregnant women.

The Torah and the UVVA agree that the fetus has value; and that those who would harm it ought to be punished ~~as if it were a full-term baby~~. Whether you believe the fetus is a person, or just a possession of a household, is not relevant to either. Brill is right that the Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a modern version of Exodus 21:22-25. ~~No person who opposes this Act may call himself a Jew or Christian in honesty.~~

UPDATE 11/8/2009: I was wrong. The UVVA is a Christian overreaction to the passage and alien to the intent of the Torah. Read this.

Labels: abortion, antiquity, apology, religion

posted by Zimri on 18:21 | link |

Sunday, May 05, 2002

Another one bites the dust

Has a Southampton University professor found a proof of the Poincaré Theorem? Paulos has a "layman's terms" version at ABCNews:

Poincare's conjecture says that a certain property of a sphere in space holds for higher-dimensional analogues of a sphere. To understand the property, imagine stretching a rubber band around an orange. We can contract this rubber band slowly, making sure it neither breaks nor loses contact with the surface of the orange. In this way we can shrink the rubber band to a point. We can't do this with a rubber band stretched around a doughnut (either around the hole or around the body).
The orange, but not the doughnut, is said to be "simply connected." Henri Poincaré, who, incidentally, almost discovered relativity theory before Einstein, was aware of the fact that a ball like an orange could be characterized by this property of simple connectivity. He wondered if this held true for balls in higher-dimensional space.

UPDATE 10/13/2009: The short answer was "no he hasn't". I'm enjoying the sweet, sweet irony of this post's title...

I suppose I could have noted the name of the guy who proffered the bogus proof but in retrospect, he's best left to obscurity. I did manage to correct the link at least. The second one. The first dead link, I've deleted.

I do owe an apology: I should have noted Perelman's proof when it happened.

Labels: apology, bullshit, science

posted by Zimri on 14:16 | link |