Coding My Thoughts » Business

CakeFest #2 coming up

mariano — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:25:00 +0000

Mark your calendars: first week of December, 2008 is the time for CakeFest #2, the second official gathering organized by the Cake Software Foundation to cover your favorite topic: CakePHP. This time, instead of sunny California, we are gathering on an exciting (also sunny) location: Buenos Aires, Argentina.

CakeFest Argentina 2008 will offer lectures in English and Spanish, so everyone is welcome! We expect a high turnaround so if you have a company, sign up for a sponsorship spot to get the prospectus, and then select your sponsorship level. If you have an IT topic that you master and would like to share with other bakers, then submit your lecture proposal.

If you are not interested in speaking nor sponsoring CakeFest, then signup as a visitor to attend. CakeFest #2 is shaping to be an exciting PHP / CakePHP event, so you better be there!

How the workplace impacts productivity for developers

mariano — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:27:00 +0000

When analyzing developers performance and how outside factors influence their productivity, there’s little to no reference regarding the work environment, not particularly a developer’s relation to their coleagues, but mostly to the physical location on which their work is being undertaken.

In Argentina and most countries with at least some offshore culture, most big software factories believe that productivity increase is the sole result of salary increases, neglecting how important an office location / disposition is to make a substantial difference. It is very common to find hundreds of developers working side by side on a flat table, with little to no independence among each other.

On the other side, there are companies that go the extra mile and some times take this concept of office improvement too far, allowing developers to play basketball, shoot pool, or chill out with video games during office hours.

Like anything in life, the perfect balance lies in the middle.

I have found myself considering how great it will be for CRICAVA Technologies to move offices from our current downtown location, to a selective beach side house-like office. It is a fact that we reduce our productivity during traffic peak hours, when the disturbing noise from the street finds its way to our offices.

Programming is a perfect combination of science and art, and as such not only important figures such as pattern adherence, quality of code, or bugs per code blocks should be considered, but also the need of concentration to achieve a level of creativity that only greater coders can benefit from.

When setting up a developer work place don’t think about reducing cost in mobiliary, but think about how that supposed cost reduction will influence your team’s productivity. In the end, if you find the balance, you’ll notice how your team performance increases, and therefore your company’s competivity increases.

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The danger of MBA types running software development firms

mariano — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:06:00 +0000

Reading Joel’s blog, I picked up on something he said that got me thinking: “Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf [...] The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand.”

Through my own working experience, I find this statement to be absolutely true. A lot of MBA types go in to great MBA schools, get their praised degrees, and come out thinking: “Ok, now on to conquer the world… Which company should I be running?” When in fact they should be thinking something like: “What can I really do to manage a company and not sink it down?” There are tons of examples in the world of this kind of “executives as a life style” type of people who believe just because they’ve got an MBA they can understand anything that is put on their desk. Well, they can’t.

I have witnessed how MBAs on a software firm came in, signing down their Senior Manager or Director of Corporate whatever on every paper, while they couldn’t even understand how to bold a phrase using Microsoft Word. Don’t even talk about launching Microsoft Outlook to read their emails. The only thing most of them seemed to know how to do with the computer was turning it on, off, and occasionally beating the monitor down. I mean, come on, how can you tell me you’ve got an MBA from a top business school but still can’t seem to set up a Power Point presentation? And you honestly believe you have what it takes to run a software company?

Joel rants about a lot of things, but he certainly hit the nail on that one. He said, while talking about a meeting he had with Bill Gates when he was working at Microsoft back in 1992 or something, “Bill Gates was amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces [...] He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.”

Also, for whatever reason (I should go to an MBA school to understand what it’s all about), the MBA types seem to have a passion for meetings. I mean, they do meeting after meeting after meeting to the point where it’s exhausting, and you lost the whole meaning of it. It kind of makes me remember that “American Psycho” movie, where they flash their business cards as it was a matter of who was better. It’s amazing.

When you are on a software firm you need to make quick decisions. You go to meetings to discuss something, and come out with a decision 20, or even 30 minutes later. Not to start talking about the actual problem only after 50 minutes of rambling about anything but what got you there. This trully gets me on my nerves. I remember having all this code in my head that I had to solve that day, but then being asked to go on countless meetings to discuss things that weren’t even relevant, and that took far more time than they should have.

I was actually more productive on the coding after 6 pm, simply because there were no more meetings to attend and I had all the time I needed to do the coding. Which, I’m sorry to say, on a software firm is what LETS YOU have those meetings. The only reason you are sitting down on a conference room is because the money that came out of the software that was developed ALLOWED YOU to buy that conference room. Give me a break.

I do think, however, that generalization is not a good thing, so I don’t believe every MBA behaves like this. To tell you the truth, I even know MBAs and MBA students that have these things clear, but they are just a few. I’d like to give them my sincerest congratulations for knowing what it takes. And to the other bunch of clueless MBAs, the “this MBA degree gives me the chance to conquer the universe without knowing what a universe really is” thinking fellows, my request to start thinking, and stop talking about things that make no real sense.

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First Google Analytics results for Java Users Group Argentina

mariano — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:48:00 +0000

After some short setting up (about two minutes per site), I’ve added Google Analytics code to start getting some statistics to these sites: CRICAVA Technologies corporate site, CRICAVA Technologies Open Source, CRICAVA Offshore Development Portfolio and Java Users Group Argentina. I must say I’m quite happy with the ammount of data Analytics is starting to provide after a couple of days. Eventhough you have to get used to the way they organized the information (I see a lot of UI theory work there), you can get valuable conclusions that are hard to obtain with any standard statistics package. Let’s see some of those.

Here are some normal statistics that I wanted to share obtained from our Java Users Group Argentina portal. First of all, if you look at the graphic below, you can see that our visitors are mainly from latin america.

If we narrow it down just a little bit, and as the following figure shows, we can see that Argentina (25.23%), closely followed by Spain (23.62%), concentrates most of the origin of our visits.

Now, a large portion of these visits are originated after using Google as the search engine. If you look at the following graphic, you’ll see that 80.50 % of incoming visits are due to google searches, versus only 8.99% direct visits. This tells me that, as we confirmed over the past few months, Google ranks our Java site quite high, which produces several visits per day.

One final note, something that wouldn’t have been expected just a couple of years ago. Firefox usage grows enormously. Look at the following image: 65.18 % of our visitors are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, while 31.21 % are using Firefox. That’s a 96.39 % between these two very popular browsers. However, we do have to consider that the majority of our visitors are closely IT oriented, so these numbers would change dramatically for a standard internet portal (such as a newspaper portal).

eSassy, a tool for unified collaborative shopping

mariano — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:00:00 +0000

Try out the recently launched eSassy, a unique service including an Internet Explorer Toolbar that allows you to unify your shopping experience, and share / review products together with your friends.

Using a very easy to follow toolbar (see screenshot below) you can quickly add your favorite products (that you may’ve found on any shopping portal, such as amazon.com, ebay.com, etc.) to your unified shopping cart, and even tell your friends about it. You can also suggest products to your friends, or add them as surprise gifts so your network of friends can comment about it, without the lucky who’s going to receive the gift knows about it.

I find this to be a really useful tool since I am not the kind of user who shops at just one site. Quite the contrary, I buy stuff from different sources, so before eSassy it was hard for me to keep track. Now, not only I can keep track of my wish to have list of products, but I can also ask for my friends opinions.

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RentACoder publishes CRICAVA’s article on their website

mariano — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 03:41:00 +0000

The excellent B2B IT service provider RentACoder.com has published an article of our own on their Coder’s Article section. Check it out at:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareCoders/articles/ImproveYourRACRanking.asp

We tried to share with other RAC coders our experience working on the site, giving the reader a set of tips trying to help them improve their own ranking. Hope it helps

Cricava launches CRICAVA Technologies Open Source

SeaCode, enough to make you sick

mariano — Mon, 09 May 2005 23:06:00 +0000

Dear God. I’ve found this the other day: http://www.sea-code.com/. This company has presented a project were they land a boat in international waters, just 5 kms away from US coast, and fill it with lots of programmers. Their proposal is that you get the same price as you did when hiring offshore developers from India, but have them 5 minutes away. Being in international waters, jobs there would not be under the US Labour Legislation umbrella. So, everybody wins, they say.

Today I sent this email to them, which I want to show you:

I feel truly disgusted. Every time I read your company statements I cannot believe my eyes. One would think that slavery thinking would've been wiped out from most so-called human minds by today, 2005. But it appears that business and reality still have a way to shock us. I've got an idea that could improve your already popular project: why not chain them to their chairs, and say amongst your benefits: "with our exclusive Stay-In-Business philosophy we guarantee our clients 24 hours of constant development. We asure our customers that no programmer will be asleep, since among their daily meal they get a Stay-UpTM pill that prevents them from sleeping." But don't worry, I've got others: "Let your offshore code be 100% bug free. After years of research we have found the only way to prevent bugs from appearing on systems that are developed by SeaCode programmers: every bug gets punished by three wipes on the programmer's naked body. We have proven that this treat-punishment software development methodoly reduces bug appearance to an absolute zero in just three sessions of punishment!"

Wake up to reality, please. I beg of you. America has sold itself as the land of the free. At least that is what one can see on American movies and series. I do not see how putting a bote in international waters (to avoid US labour legislation), filling it with hundred of programmers, and then claiming (as you do on your website): " SeaCode brings already offshored jobs back to the U.S. and assures that 90 cents of every dollar from our clients stays in the U.S. instead of flowing to foreign locations." can actualy be an example of a business from the so-called Land of the Free. Give me a break.

I cannot avoid feeling sorry and ashamed for the poor programmers who are willing to suffer that kind of treatment to get jobs. You are taking advantage of their situation. So, why not taking advantage of kids as well? Go to Vietnam or some other country, drop some bucks there so local government would allow you to implement your next-in-line project: "Seacode presents a new concept in offshore development: Programmer to the bones. We take recently borned infants from around the world, teach them how to program from day one, and we assure our customers that they will be productive as soon as they turn 6 years of age. No other company can give you the kind of employee fidelity that we offer. Don't wait until they have a degree, don't let their personal lifes get in the way. With Programmer to the bones, they won't have a personal life!"

Things like this can only let you arrive to the conclusion that we have not improved even one step, we seem to be walking backwards.

The Longhorn will blow

mariano — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 03:40:00 +0000

Another Windows Longhorn preview was given this time at the Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference according to RedmondMag.com.

This time Bill Gates decided to show the new desktop design, the improved searching, statements about better and stronger security, and a little fist in the face for Adobe: Metro, a new document format to print and share documents that is based on XML.

This new version of the widely used Windows is expected to be shipped to stores sometime in December 2006, but Bill Gates assured that a beta version would be available during United States summer.

There has been lots of fuzz about Longhorn. Some interesting, some other rather minor improvements. The truth is that I am anxious to give it a try. Now, a note has to be made. For all Linux fanatics out there (and some Mac as well.) Fanaticism is not a good thing. It’s an exhesive enthusiasm, an unreasoning zeal, wild and extravagant notions.

The thing that surprises me the most is that Linux was born as an option. All these years we knew that Linux was supposed to offer an alternative to the so-called Windows Monopoly. One would call it “freedom of OS choice.” However, Linux fanatics describe it as the ONLY operating system that is worth using. That doesn’t sound like a choice to me. It sounds more like a “theory” monopoly.

I have been using computers since I was eleven years old. I used different operative systems, you name it: DOS, Windows 3.1/95/98/NT/2000/2003/XP, Linux RedHat/Debian/SuSE/Mandrake, HP-UX, SunOS, OS/2. They all have their ups and downs. Some of them are good for some things, while bad for others. I cannot enfatize this more strongly: there’s NO perfect OS, just as there’s no perfect software.

Who can honestly say that Linux is the best? Or Windows? Or CP/M for that matter? Who can explain in a coherent way why any OS, without falling into a fanatic statement (remember the definition), is better than any other for every situation? Did you try all OS out there? Yes? Really? Did you try Java Desktop System? What about HP’s VMS? Tried AmigaOS as well? Mach (not a mispell, it is Mach, not Mac)? BOS, TI99-4, Masix, … ? Now, think again, can you tell me why YOUR OS is the best? Can you proove it?

Software programming is not only about making money, its about learning. Learn to learn, and then we’ll keep talking.

For all of you SPAMMERS out there

mariano — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 02:10:00 +0000

Found an interesting thing today:

http://www.spampoison.com

They have a link based approach to mess up with Spam Robots (robots that spider web pages searching for email addresses.) It is not bullet-proof (one could write just a 20 lines code robot that would avoid being confused by SmapPoison), but it will get some of the spammers out of the way.

I consider spamming a huge problem, getting about 150 emails per day that are pure and simple SPAM. It takes time out of my working day, and that makes me loose money. I don’t see any spammers knocking on my door and giving me a paycheck for all the dimes that they made me loose

So in the meantime, it is best to fight against them.

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