Programming Language Is Not An Excuse

Some projects are forced to use a less-than-ideal programming language. This might be caused by a desire to reduce maintenance costs ("All our maintainers know RPG"), to program fast ("It is so easy to get a fully featured application with Python"), to ensure high reliability ("Ada programs are the most fail-safe"), or to achieve high execution speed ("Our applications are time-critical, we need to use C"). It is possible to write quality programs in any language. In fact, if you are a good programmer, you should be a good programmer in any language; a less-than-ideal language might make you work harder, though.


Reference:
Yourdon, E., How to Manage Structured Programming, New York: Yourdon, Inc., 1976.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! I can see why people raved about the Harry Potter series. There is so much good stuff in here and not just fun adventure but difficult topics like prejudice and death.

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Use Appropriate Languages

Programming languages vary greatly in their ability to help you do your job. Your specific project or product goals will often dictate the appropriate language. The following guidelines are meant to be just that - guidelines, not gospel.

If your number one goal is portability, then use a language that has been demonstrated to be highly portable. If your number one goal is fast development, the use a language that aids in such fast development. If your primary goal is low maintenance, then use a language with many built-in, quality-inducing features. If your application requires a great use of character strings or complex data structures, select a language that supports them. If your product must be maintained by a group of existing maintainers who know language X, then use language X. Finally, if your customer says to use language Y then use language Y or you won't be in business long.

Reference:
McConnell, S., Code Complete, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993.

Evita anidar demasiado profundo

El anidamiento de las instrucciones IF-THEN-ELSE simplifica enormemente la lógica de programación. Por otro lado, anidarlos más que, por ejemplo, tres niveles de profundidad reduce en gran medida su capacidad de comprensión. La mente humana es capaz de recordar solo una cierta cantidad de lógica antes de que se confunda. Se puede utilizar una variedad de técnicas simples para reducir el anidamiento.

Don't Nest Too Deep

Nesting IF-THEN-ELSE statements greatly simplifies programming logic. On the other hand, nesting them more than, say, three levels deep decreases their understandability considerably. The human mind is capable of remembering only a certain amount of logic before it becomes confused. A variety of simple techniques can be used to reduce nesting.


Reference:
McConnell, S., Code Complete, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993.

Structured Code Is Not Necessarily Good Code

The original definition of structured programming presented by Edsger Dijkstra was provided to facilitate program proving. The constructs he recommended (IF-THEN-ELSE, DO-WHILE, etc) have now become so commonplace (though program proving has not) that their use is now called "programming" rather than "structured programming." It is important to note; however, that not all "structured" programs are good. One can write incredibly obscure programs that are still structured. Structure is almost a necessary, but far from a sufficient, condition for quality programming.


Reference:
Yourdon, E., How to Manage Structured Programming, New York: Yourdon, Inc., 1976.

You Can Use Unstructured Languages

Unstructured code violates Edsger Dijkstra's guidance to restrict control structures to IF-THEN-ELSE, DO-WHILE, DO-UNTIL, and CASE. Notice that it is possible to write structured code in languages without these structures, such as in assembly languages, by documenting the use of GOTOs to implementing these structures only.

To do this, first write your algorithms using the aforementioned control structures. Next, convert these into in-line comments. Next, translate the comments into their equivalent programming language statements. GOTOs will appear, but they will be implementing the better constructs and will facilitate, not hamper, readability, maintainability, and provability.


Reference:
McConnell, S., Code Complete, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993.

Dumbheart

Dumbheart: A Get Fuzzy Collection by Darby Conley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite be 10 years old, I find all the republican/democrat jokes to be spot on. I'm not sure they were balanced by it was nice to see both sides lampooned.

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Google AutoML And Thinking Machines

After attending a machine learning presentation I got the chance to talk to the presenter about AutoML. He said that it is out-performing a lot of data scientists at Google. Which really peaked my interest. I asked him if the software was similar to the software Daniel Hillis wrote back in the '90s to generate code that was out-performing human coders (see The Pattern on the Stone). Sadly, he had no idea who Daniel Hillis is. I think the idea of software generated code never caught on because no one could understand why it was faster but everyone could agree that it wasn't safe because it was so difficult to decide if it would always work correctly. Which brings to mind the question - is AutoML safe? Will it create bias because the data is formatted a certain way?

I look forward to learning more about how AutoML works. I'm also interested in learning how to use AutoML but am vastly more interested in its internals.

Monitoring Matters

My mornings start with me reading my Google news feed. This morning included a story about Wow Air closing. Approximately four hours later I ran the following Google query:

Imagine my surprise to see a large travel company still running ads for Wow Air. At this point operations had been ceased for around ten hours. Ads for such a competitive market would probably cost one to six dollars per click. And with Wow Air being in the news curious people probably clicked that ad to see what was being sold in addition to people who wanted to travel to Iceland. I clicked it. It was a branded page but when I dug into the options Wow Air was already removed from the list of carriers. This highlights the different speeds with with different departments react to changes. And moreso, it highlights the lack of communication in businesses. Someone, probably many someones, knew that Wow Air was no more so they removed it as a flight carrier option. They did not, it would seem, reach out to Marketing and say, "Hey, you'll want to disable your ads." This is the downside of work silos. It would never have crossed their minds that such a thing could be helpful. Besides it is not their job...

For small businesses and account managers, it often isn't a problem to respond to an issue within 24 hours. Something I use and have shared with some account managers is Google Alerts. This works well but can take a day to get an alert. Basically, you get notified if some keywords you specify are referenced when a new webpage gets indexed. This might not help you if an existing webpage is updated. It depends on whether your keywords didn't use to match but do after the webpage is re-indexed.

For things that need immediate handling when there is a change then that usually requires being proactive. For example, there are lots of services that will notify you within a few minutes that a webpage has changed. In this case, if you are the person handling Ads for Wow Air then you would probably want to know anytime the main landing page changes. Most of the time the changes won't matter to you but they could reflect a need to update your ads or in an extreme case - this case - the need to disable your ads. Several years ago, I had a job where it was very helpful for me to know when and if a set of services were down or had changed. I used https://www.runscope.com/ to notify me if a set of tests didn't pass.

As a software engineer, it is really valuable to listen to the problems that your coworkers are facing, even the ones in different departments. You might hear an account manager complain about how much of a hassle it is to constantly check for press releases that relate to any of their accounts. Then you can helpfully share that you use Feedly to monitor the release of new webcomics and they could use it to get notified of press releases or anything online.