Software People Inspiring

Boffoonery! Comedy Benefit For Bletchley Park. London, Nov 3rd.

 

So it's time finally to let the cat out of the blog. I'm producing a comedy benefit gig - with just a tiny bit of help from people who actually know what they're doing - to celebrate the astonishing achievements of those jolly clever men and women who worked in tip-top secret at Bletchley Park to crack the fiendishly fiddly codes being used by the Germans in WWII.

My partner in crime is writer James Cary, whose BBC Radio 4 sitcom Hut 33 is set at Bletchley Park, so he knows a thing or two about what went on there. We're in good hands.

Our director is TV and radio comedy producer David Tyler, whose many credits include gems like Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive and Spitting Image. He's also got great experience working on charity events for terrifically worthy causes like Amnesty International, so we're in very good hands.

The show will be on Tuesday November 3rd at The Bloomsbury Theatre in London - a venue with an unbeatable track record in live comedy as well as charity shows. So, again, we're in very, very good hands indeed.

The line-up's still taking shape, but we're delighted, proud and slightly tumescent to be able to announce that we already have the services of some truly great stand-up performers, including Robin Ince, Richard Herring and Robert Llewellyn. As the show takes shape over the summer more great talent will be added to the line-up, so keep an eye on our web site (which will be launched proper in two weeks) and Twitter stream for updates.

As if that wasn't enough, James will be writing brand new sketches exclusively for the show. So it'll be an evening of clever, enlightening and hilarious boffoonery - hence the name. Sadly, Jim Davidson wasn't available. (But we struggle on.)

Tickets will go on sale in mid-August for 25 quid. If you want to be first in the queue, Twitter users can follow @boffoonery.

And what, pray tell, am I contributing to the proceedings? Well, on the programme it'll say "Executive Producer". But basically I'm handling all the boring business, legal and financial stuff, as well as sorting out practical details ranging from venue selection and hire to backstage catering on the night. That's right - a dogsbody :-)

A big thanks goes to the folks behind commutineer.com, our kind sponsors for the event. (More about them soon.) Their generosity means that Marks & Spencers quiche is back on the menu in the green room. Hurrah!

Software Craftsmanship Is Not Rolling Stone

 

I like to explain it this way:

Take two music magazines: Rolling Stone and Guitar Techniques.

One is written by people who probably don't play a musical instrument and is aimed at an audience of people who probably don't play a musical instrument either and is mostly not about the actual music itself. Rolling Stone is a magazine about the music business and the musician's lifestyle.

The other is written by guitar players and is aimed at guitar players and is mostly about how to play things on the guitar. In these modern times of CDs and DVDs and web media, these guitar magazines are often accompanied by recordings of famous guitar players actually playing their guitars so we can see how they do what they've been talking about doing in the magazine. Guitar Techniques is a magazine about playing the guitar.

If you read Guitar Techniques every month and try many of the examples and exercises, your playing will probably improve. It won't help your chances of producing a hit record. Not one jot. So if fame and money is your goal, you may as well read Rolling Stone (for all the good it will do you).

Guitar Techniques is a magazine for people who want to be better guitar players. Rolling Stone is a magazine kids take to their hairdresser to show them what hairstyle they want.

I believe that the spirit of software craftsmanship should be more like Guitar Techniques than Rolling Stone, in case you were wondering :-)

Dear parlezuml.com: I'd Like To Work In Computing, But I Have No Technical Skills

 

Dear parlezuml.com, I have always wanted to start a career in computing because my friends told me that you can earn the kind of money that lawyers and doctors earn but without having to waste years working round the clock and studying to qualify. Unfortunately, I cannot program a computer and don't really know much about IT, and I'm afraid this will be a blocker to my entering the computing profession. What should I do?

Anon, London

parlezuml.com says:

Never fear, Anon from London. There are actually many well paid career paths in computing that require almost no technical knowledge or programming skills. Indeed, these days a general ignorance of such matters is considered advantageous for those who wish to progress into the most highly-paid and prestigious computing roles, like project and program management, enterprise architecture and executive management (e.g., IT director, CTO).

But competition is tough, and these roles are so highly sought-after that everyday ignorance of computing is usually not enough to get you noticed. The most successful managers have worked hard to attain an almost unassailable degree of cluelessness. It's a process that takes years of not reading books, refusing to listen to your technical staff (or anyone else who might know what they're talking about), and religiously seeking out spurious sources of information, such as software vendors and management consultants, who can offer you the kind of high quality disinformation and unsubstantiated nonsense you'll need in order to make the truly disasterous decisions that will be expected of you.

The best routes into computing management tend to be business and/or requirements analysis. A typical progression might take you from a junior analyst position into managing small projects, and once you have a project with a reasonably impressive budget under your belt - because the chief qualification employers look for is the size of the failed projects you managed - you are in a choice position to make the jump into the big leagues.

The main thing employers look for is somebody who can converse effectively with people who have absolutely no technical understanding of software or systems. Right now you are at the peak of that ability because you have absolutely no appreciation of technical matters yourself. You must remain eternally vigilant to preserve that ignorance at all costs. When you're surrounded by technically competent co-workers this can be very difficult, which is why the best managers go to considerable lengths to ensure that doesn't happen by hiring people who are as ignorant as they are for all the key positions that report into them.

So there's no need to feel disheartened. Far from it, in fact! You're very well-placed to begin a stellar career in computing and I have no doubt that you will progress quickly, as long as you remember to observe the golden rule: keep your ears, eyes and mind closed, and you will go far.

Free Pencil & Paper UML Trial Edition

 

When people ask me what my favourite UML modeling tool is, I tell them that pencil and paper is the one to beat (or marker and whiteboard, if you need team modeling capabilities).

It's possibly a sign of our times that many software developers have not heard about "pencil and paper" before, and the follow-up question is usually "where can I get a demo version of that?"

So as a service to all your pencil and paper novices out there, parlezuml.com is giving you 10 blank sheets of special UML modeling paper which you can use to evaluate the tool today.

Agile Coaching Book Out Soon

 

After many months of toil, Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley's new book about Agile coaching is close to hitting the shelves.

You can pre-order your copy from Amazon now, and the book itself will be shipping in August, just after Agile 2009, which is nice timing.

Software Craftsmanship North America, August 26th, Chicago

 

Typical! You wait Thrumpty Billion years for a software craftsmanship conference, and now we can't move for them ;-)

Those jolly clever folk at 8th Light and Obtiva have put together a cracking conference with some very notable keynotes and a whole bunch of exciting talks from the great and the good. It's being held in Chicago on August 26th, and I thoroughly recommend you put it in your diary, or - if you don't have a diary - go to the Swissotel Chicago now and wait there until they show up.

Software Craftsmanship 2010 Straw Poll

 

The long and windy road to Software Craftsmanship 2010 starts here with a couple of questions that you, dear reader, can help us resolve.

For a whole host of very good reasons, the current front runner for next year's venue is Bletchley Park. I hear it worked out very nicely for the recent Agile Coaches Gathering organised by Rachel Davies and chums. The question is; if we held it at Bletchley Park (just a 45 minute hop by train from Euston, and then a 3 minute walk from Bletchley station), would you come?



The next question is about money. Thanks to the very generous sponsorship and hospitality of BBC Worldwide and BBC Backstage, we were able to put together a fairly cheap - but decidedly cheerful - event this last February. SC2010 is going to need a bigger budget so that we can do some of the really cool things that were beyond our reach last time and put together a truly great event. This would mean that we'll be asking for a small contribution to the coffers from your good and kind and generously lovely (but not in a sexual way) dear self - somewhere between 50 to 100 of your Earth pounds. To give you an idea, the Agile Coaches Gathering was 75 quid, and bloody good value at that.



Many thanks for your time, and mind how you go, squire!

Devin Townsend's Ki

 

Hoorah!

Devin Townsend's latest album "Ki" (pronounced "Kee") is almost upon us and you can preview many of the tracks on YouTube.

This Canadian chap is, in my humble onion, by far the most talented singer/writer/instrumentalist I've had the good fortune to listen to.




Full Title Track, Ki

Government Shirks Funding Responsibility For Bletchley Park. Down To Us, Then.

 

As if the current UK government couldn't sink any lower after a week of relentless revelations about MP's fiddling their expenses, calls for more funding for embattled WWII and computing heritage site Bletchley Park have fallen on deaf ears in the House of Lords.

Honestly, I'm dumbfounded by the government's position. Everyone I speak to supports this cause. EVERYONE! The contribution of the people who worked at Bletchley Park to our post-war world is incalculable. Churchill estimated that the war was ended early enough because of intelligence gleaned by the code breakers at Bletchley that more than 20 million lives could have been saved.

That's 20 million parents and grandparents, to put it into perspective. Generations later, there could be hundreds of millions of people living today who would never have been born if it wasn't for the staggering achievements of the folk at Bletchley. If every one of those people - heck, for all I know I could be one of them (the odds are that good) - donated just a few pennies, Bletchley Park's problems would be over.

And anyone who relies on computing devices or digital electronics has a debt to pay to Bletchley Park, too. I read somewhere recently that there are about 9 million professional software developers working today. If one in four programmers donated a measly five quid, Bletchley's future would be assured.

Obviously, the UK government just don't get it, and their decision yet again defies the will of the people they're supposed to represent. I guess it's up to us, then.

So how about it? Donate 5 quid to Bletchley Park, then email 10 of your colleagues and ask them to donate a fiver and email 10 of their colleagues.

Then, when you and your children visit a rejuvinated Bletchley Park in 10 years' time you know that you did your bit to honour the memories of the thousands of people who did their bit to make many of our careers - not to mention our lives - possible.

EU Proposes Consumer Protection Against Buggy Games

 

If this story is accurate, then this is a very interesting development indeed.

It seems the EU Commission now feel that bugs in game software constitute a faulty product, and as such should be covered by the same kind of consumer protection laws that cover is when we buy a faulty toaster or a faulty lawnmower.

This is a radical step forward in their thinking. Historically, software license agreements have provided developers with a "get out of jail free" card they can play that says that just because the product you paid good money for doesn't necessarily work as advertised that doesn't mean you're entitled to a refund.

If this law came into effect, it would mean games developers could no longer fob us off with the "we'll fix it in the upgrade" excuse, which often requires us to actually pay to get the fix in many kinds of software (along with a whole bunch of new bugs, of course.)

This would require games developers to seriously up their game - if you'll excuse the pun - as far as reliability is concerned.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I'd like to see this law come into force, and to see it extended to cover all commercial software - especially bespoke.

Is it enforceable, though? Well, perhaps with a few simple standards regarding product delivery, then yes, it might just be. A software product is essentially just a set of files that are built from the source and other artefacts. If that product is created using an automated build proess, and if both the source files and the build scripts are strictly managed - in both the practical SCM sense and in the legal sense that a copy is kept as part of the developers' records - just as a civil engineering project will have to keep records of plans and engineering calculations and wotnot just in case the bridge falls down or something - then it should be possible in a dispute to trace a shipped product directly back to the source it was built from. Any attempts at shenanigans on the part of the developers could be rebuked simply by running the build and comparing the resulting set of outputs against what was shipped/downloaded.

Anyway, hurrah for the EU (for once) and let's keep our fingers crossed for the best outcome.