To keep it simple you need to be smart

To keep it simple you need to be *very* smart.

Corollary: Simple and stupid is just stupid.

Essential software cycle

One step back, two steps forward:

1. Deconstruct
2. Reconstruct
3. Extend

The old school

Once upon a time there was:

1. Do it properly.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Follow the rules.

The old school of engineering.

A semantic space-dimension for the Web

[ "A space-dimension to the Web: a combinatorial optimisation problem"
  
  Published at: http://architectando.blogspot.com
                /2009/07/space-dimension-to-web-combinatorial.html
  Discussed at: http://groups.google.co.uk
                /group/sci.math/browse_frm/thread/2cd2380c0bd245eb
  
  How to give a *sensible* space-dimension to the Web.
  Solutions, corrections, suggestions, etc. all very welcome.
  This is an open project. Contributions will be acknowledged.
  
  -LV
]
[
 
=== Setting:
 
Let G be a weighted, directed graph.
 
Let S be a lattice space for G.
 
Let M be a physical model for G.
 
Let U be (the absolute value of) the potential energy (in M over S, given G)
 
=== Problems:
 
Problem 1 (optional): Express U.
 
Problem 2 (optional): Minimize U.
 
Problem 3: Express and minimize U, given the following constraints:
 
- Constraint 3.CG1: Weights in G have positive rational values.
 
- Constraint 3.CG2: Graph G is sparse.
 
- Constraint 3.CG3: Graph G is dynamic, i.e. nodes and edges change (appear, desappear, change their weight). The dynamic is by discrete singular events, changes are smooth.
 
- Constraint 3.CS1: S is a diophantine circle where positions start from zero along the circumference, and the distance function 'x' is:
 
    let c be the circumference (i.e. number of nodes in G)
    let x' = x1 - x2 (absolute distance, integer >= 0)
    
    x := x'      , if x' <= c/2
         c - x'  , otherwise
    (i.e. distance along the shortest arc, integer >= 0)
 
- Constraint 3.CM1: Within model M, the force 'F' is:
 
    let i,j be non-negative integers indexing nodes in G
    
    f_ij = k_ij * x_ij , if exists in G edge i->j with weight k_ij
           0             , otherwise
    (i.e. absolute elastic force, rational >= 0)
    
    F = sum_i sum_j f_ij
    (total force, rational >= 0)
 
- Constraint 3.CU1: Given that graph G is dynamic (see CG3), we want to minimise U and keep it minimised!
 
=== Solutions:
 
My solution to Problem 3 at the moment consists in a "local approach". I build a graph that is near-to-optimal (by inserting any new node at a location so to minimise total energy change), plus have a process that keeps iterating the solution space for local improvements (by swap of adjacent nodes). The idea is that such process should be able to keep up with changes (that are smooth, see 3.CG3 and 3.CU1), and this together with said strategy of insertion should be enough to keep the system at a near-to-optimal minimum (if not global! I guess this depends on practical timing considerations... and complicated calculations. Anyway, if needed, some simulated annealing might also be implemented).
 
Incidentally, in the setting of Problem 3 there is no role for node weights. This is a choice, not a simplification, related to semantic considerations. It might be surely discussed: we are after a *sensible* way to give a space-dimension to the Web.
 
]

Software craftsmanship

"Crafting the details" to me evokes hours spent filling in the little gaps and cleaning up, while rethinking the whole thing over and over again. Hours when few lines of code get written, yet the overall quality and understanding improve dramatically. I was thinking how much I value and do it...

Software craftsmanship is when we spend at least 20% of the project-time crafting the details.

Posted to the software craftsmanship user group:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/
/software_craftsmanship/msg/9d5194756e327110

I am a software professional

[ Draft manifesto. Partly in response to the craftsmanship manifesto. ]

I am a software professional:

1) I build software that solves my customers' needs, explicit and implicit.

That is the only software I will qualify as "working".

2) The software I build not only works, it keeps working.

Always around the optimal balance between minimality and continuous improvement.

3) I build software with honesty, responsibility, vision, and passion.

My customer is king and I will tell him when he is wrong: no excuse, rather quit.

4) I believe in professional integrity and real competence.

This is no place for unscrupulous marketers and incompetent wannabies.

I am a software professional, and I am damn proud of it.

Artificial Intelligence

THE AVERAGE MAN IS
THE NEXT GENERATION AI

(There is intelligence and intelligence.)

Why is the Software Industry sucking more and more

With inflation and pollution come ignorance and even more confusion.

To begin with, the A in the ABC of software production:

It is not about doing it right, it is about:

doing the right *thing*!!

Software is about the conceptual side and only marginally about the technicalities. About using your mind, sensibility and intelligence to provide a concrete and competitive service to people.

This is certainly clear to customers: information technology is a wonderful instrument, yet an enabler and never a driver. This is too seldom clear to present day software professionals, who should realise the matter in question remains predominantly conceptual even at the lowest levels.

The rest is the usual gadgets for grown-up kids. Post the 90's, software engineering is dead, killed by the invasion of incompetence in a huge market of marketers. For instance, most of the latest generation of professionals in this field have never ever encountered *analysis*: and, no analysis implies no quality, period. While most of the managers, as well as the divulgators, the opinion leaders, and overall the big companies, not only do not have a clue, they actually make every effort so that this, and in fact all that may be related to any process of intelligence and learning, will never happen. The whole situation is simply and deeply compromised. Just as everything else nowadays -- everything coming from this side of the planet, that is. Corruption has broken down empires across history, sometimes rigidity, but noone ever guessed an empire of sacred mass stupidity devoted to self-destruction could be near to unbeatable. In fact, just everything is sucking more and more.

Yet another argument: against test-driven

Mr Jason Gorman, in his post "Test-driven Enterprise Architecture" (September 16, 2008) [*], writes:

I've discovered that the most effective way to align business goals with the software and systems we deliver is through heirachies of tests, not through pretty pictures and dotted lines.

I have to disagree, in the essence. It is certainly true that most of those dotted lines get drawn without criterion, which is indeed what makes the difference between an *analysis* and a bunch of dotted lines. Still, the problem domain and the solution domain do not coincide, rather the latter is a subset/subproduct of the former. In practice, as information engineering tells, the solution domain emerges from the opportunities for automation that come from the process and data models at the business level. Here is a gap, or rather a "distinction", just like the distinction between syntax and semantics, that must not be neglected, otherwise not only the understanding but the very quality we are after is gone, with all that in fact counts.

[*] http://parlezuml.com/blog/?postid=693

If I jump into a Ferrari and... run away?

Ok, let's suppose somehow I get around the boxes of an F1 circuit at the time of a race: difficult surely, but if you take into account a bit of luck, pretty doable.

Let's then suppose somehow I manage to find an F1 car in the proper conditions, that is as much ready to start as needed: so difficult that, again, with a bit of luck, it is definitely possible.

Let's finally suppose I manage to start and go: not so difficult, above all if I have *trained* hundreds of hours in a proper simulator...

...broooOOEBY*&CROXZYQNRX8-7pVWOaei72)D9####F[---

Wow... let's assume I wake up from a crash at the very first bench after the start. Hmm, what is gone wrong?

Flash forward, watching TV in London: in a show called "TopGear", a journalist is supposed to have a try at an F1. He has some previous *experience*, so they first let him try an F2 (or similar, don't really remember), so that he can prepare to the F1 experience. He is not that fast but quite comfortable on the F2, but at his first try on the F1, that is, after he has managed to start the car, he is not even able to go as fast as to keep tires in temperature. At his second try, and not before some magic from the mechanics, he does it; funny driving, anyway he is able to complete his 3 or so laps with no more damage than a couple of testa-coda in the smaller benches.

Bottom line: simulation doesn't sum up to competence, and I'd rather go into journalism than try some more training.

Indeed, do not steal a Ferrari, just forget it: ***.