Mythical Man Month

I don’t know about you, but I feel very uneasy, when I don’t have much to do. I’m a self-confessed workaholic and feel guilty when I waste time. I am currently “on the bench”, for the last couple of days at the cube farm, that I work for. The project that I was working on, completed last month, and while my company sorts out another project for me, I’m supposed to sit around nibbling my finger nails.

So, I picked up this book, which I had bought last year and was planning to read, but never got around to actually reading it. So, with time in my hands, I started off. A little background on the book would set up the context though. It’s called the “The Mythical Man Month” by Frederick P Brooks Jr.

Mr. Brooks has delineated his own experiences as a project manager for the IBM system/360 and OS/360(it’s operating system). The anecdotes included and the aptly deduced theories on the art of software development make an interesting read.

This book has so many pearls of wisdom, that I’d recommend it to each and every programmer (especially project managers). The book talks about the common pitfalls of software development and the evolving nature of computer science. Brooks wrote this book in 1982 and some of the ideas are somewhat outdated, but still, most of the authors practical insight on the dilemma of deadline vs quality of end product is worth noting.

Read it if you want to comprehend the black art of software engineering.

Guide to the Mind

One of my friends in blogosphere, sent me a link to an e book few days back. He claims that, this has to be the best psychological book that he has read. The book or rather e book is called: A Programmers Guide to the mind. I started reading it yesterday, and realized that my friend who sent me this link must either be seriously insane or a fiendishly clever person.

This e book is so difficult to interpret( personal opinion!) that I couldn’t read past the 3rd chapter. The complicated diagrams and the amount of thinking needed to digest the literature was too much for me. The guy who wrote it must have spent half his life conjuring the whole thing up. And the reader who patiently reads and actually comprehends the book has to be very very smart( or he has too much free time in his hands).

So, if you’re brave and patient and really want to unlock your the functioning of your mind, go ahead and read this.

Questions omnibus

I have certain questions nagging me, like an itch in the back at a place where our hands can’t reach. I better spill them out here in the open, so that by happenstance anybody who stumbles upon this blog( probability < 0.0009), might know the answers and would kindly post the replies in the comments.

Why did Kathy Sierra of the Creating Passionate Users stop blogging ? I know she was terrified of the whole “killer” comments incident. But come on, this is internet, and Internet according to my personal definition is 70% noise and 30% sensible signal. Why shut yourself up behind close doors, Kathy ?

Does anyone actually read my blog( except me ) ? I’m sure someone does, not that I am a great writer. I’m sure it’s my fault too, I don’t post regularly, my posts are random and don’t have a unifying theme; which brings me to my next question ?

What should be the unifying theme of my blog ? Should it be technical? Humor? Personal? or all of them ? Right now it’s sort of mish mash of all of these. Going forward, I promise to blog on a unifying theme which will, hopefully, improve my readership.

So, there it goes, folks. If you’re reading this and you know me, what’s your take on my questions ?

Facebook Rocks

After orkutting for over a year now, I’m hooked to Facebook. It is way cooler than Orkut can ever be. Infact after having merged the wordpress app with Facebook platform, I’m writing this post directly from Facebook site. Ain’t that hep?
My handle on Facebook is : Anup Jadhav. Do add me as your friend or send me a fish, perhaps?

Anyways, I just wrote this quick post to see if my Facebook – wordpress app works fine or not. Will write a sensible post next time.

Diverse Knowledge Portfolio

If you’re a clever and astute investor, you’re familiar with the basic guiding axiom of not putting all your eggs in one basket. You would create your investment portfolio in such a way, that your assets and shares are as diversified as possible. This will spread the risk and reduce the chance of losing all of your capital, in case one of the chosen companies decides to take a dive. This same principle can be exploited in software engineering to your professional advantage.

Lets say, you’re currently working only on Java/J2EE technologies, and your current pragmatic viewpoint is that, ‘I’m going to be more efficient in my area of expertise’. The truth is, by deciding to be a specialist in just one technology, you’re exposing yourself to the risk of getting outdated at some later date. This is where having a diverse Knowledge Portfolio comes to the rescue. Having a diverse Knowledge Portfolio means, in crude terms, to be an expert of varied technologies. The first step is to look at yourself, look at what you like, what you want to be doing and how you see yourself in five years’ time. Then, you need to look at the market and deduce where the market is heading. Your driving thought should be: “Okay, this is where I would like to be and this is how I am going to get there.” This does not invalidate the necessity of being a specialist in your chosen technology, but just being good in one area is not sufficient, as it will limit your scope of growth.

For example, you think you are good in Java and can code a function with your eyes closed. This thought, though comforting, can make you complacent and you start trusting this limited technical prowess to see you through. Pause for a moment and think about it, Java has seen a swift and abrupt rise in the tech market and has replaced C/C++ to be a part of major Web technologies today. How can you be sure that some future language/technology will not surpass Java’s glory and dethrone it from the top position? But, if you proactively invest your time and energy, to learn a new language, framework, or an emerging trend, you’d position yourself to face the vicissitudes of the tech market. You might feel, that in future Sun and Microsoft marriage is imminent, and that Java and .NET applications might be talking to each other more often (e.g. A .NET front end talking to J2EE backend). In this case, someone who knows both will be more valuable and indispensable. Look for value, that’s the key. Related to that is diversification. If you diversify, what you’re doing is you’re spreading the risk and a typical portfolio should have low risk low return, high-risk high return, and in the technology world the same thing applies.

This is also true when developers are expected to possess domain knowledge, along with their technical expertise. If a software engineer working in an Insurance domain is fluent in Insurance lingo, his work will provide more value than a developer with superficial knowledge of the Insurance industry. The future belongs to versatile developers who can smoothly juggle and mix technology with domain knowledge.

So, if you’re keen on securing your future, sketch out your Knowledge Portfolio; start with what you know, what you like and what you feel is lacking in your current skill set. Find out emerging trends, core technologies that will dominate the next wave of technological revolution. Chart out a plan for yourself, update your skill set and position yourself to catch this revolutionary tide when it arises. But remember don’t be rigid. Watch out for the trends, and keep revising your portfolio as when the upcoming trend shows deviation. This is similar to what you’d do with your Investment Portfolio. You add or remove assets as when the stock price changes drastically to prevent losses.

Bottom line: Be an active investor of your knowledge portfolio. Being a smart worker with vision and plan, beats being a hard worker without any goal. So, don’t invest all your time and energy in one knowledge pot, diversify it.

The Magic Pill

Gym: A place where the probability of the wallet losing weight is more than the wallet holder. Today, I quit my gym. I’m declaring this unabashedly because I’ve realised that I can’t fool myself with the harsh realities of busy life. I simply  cannot find time for the gym. I’ve tried every trick in the GTD book to snatch some time out of my rampant schedule for the gym. But, in between the day job, evening open source projects, socializing and reading sci-fi books, I couldn’t manage to squeeze in time for the fitness drill. Even the weekends turned out to be engaging for most part, with all the work overflowing from the weekdays bowl into the weekends. In these dark times, trying to gym was like balancing a pebble on the spoon held in my mouth, while running a marathon race.

Suddenly, I feel less guilty about the whole “can’t go to the gym” excuse. At least now, my wallet isn’t the only one losing weight. This makes me wonder why did I join the gym in the first place. I’ve realized that there are 2 kinds of people when it comes to eating food. First kind, who never gain a pound, no matter how much they eat. They can hog and hog and hog and not worry about the weighing machine dominating their nightmarish dreams. Then there are the second kinds, who have to just look at the pastry shop and their body fat expands exponentially. Unfortunately, I fall in the second category. So, quitting the gym isn’t the wisest decision I’ve made. But then, there is no point being a member of an elite gym when you’re never going to pay a visit.

This makes me wonder if there is a “Wonder drug”, a slimming pill which’ll take care of all the extra body fat. All you have to do is take a pill in the morning, then you can eat all you’ve wished for, throughout the day without worrying sick about how many calories you’re accumulating. The pill will somehow burn all the extra calories and magically keep you fit and slim, irrespective of your food intake. Now, that would be *invention of the millenium*, I reckon.

Confused and Intrigued

Confused, bewildered and intrigued – these were my emotional reactions after watching David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I didn’t know what the fuss was, when my friend recommended this movie to me. He said that this is one heck of a arcane, complex movie. I’m a self-proclaimed movie buff and I’ve watched a gazillion cryptic films to be daunted by a daring claim such as: Mulholland Drive will definitely frustrate you at first and then it’ll make you think, really think.

The movie did frustrate me, alright. But most importantly it drove me to ponder over all the dangling threads of the sub-plots within the main plot. I realized that, even the main plot is not what it seems, it’s interpretation is layered, and to get to the crux of the plot each layer has to be peeled carefully and thoughtfully. After watching the movie, I googled the term “review of Mulholland drive” and found this beautiful analysis of this brilliant movie by Allen B. Ruch of TheModernWord. Allen has done a thorough job of de constructing the movie’s fine details.

The undesirable consequence of it’s complex story is, that you can’t discuss the movie or it’s labyrinthine plot with anybody who hasn’t watched the movie yet. So, I won’t spoil the surprise for you if you haven’t seen the movie, by revealing any details. But, I’d strongly commend you to buy/rent a DVD of this enigmatic movie, watch it and then analyse the movie by reading the review mentioned above. Trust me, if you consider yourself a serious movie fan, then you’ll love this movie.

How To Efficiently Set up a new Blog

It would only be appropriate to rename my blog as: “Perils of a Procrastinating Mind”. I’ve been delaying the process of writing a new post for quite a long time, for no apparent reason. Maybe, I’m just going through a phase of extreme lethargy. Last week can be described as, for lack of a better word, uninspiring.

But now, I’ve come out of my reverie and have decided to flex my writing muscles again. Since the inception of this blog, I’ve scribbled my thoughts on various topics. Though this route has given me the flexibility of exploring various genre, it has skewed my readership in a weird way. The week before I was helping my friend, set-up a new blog called Green Blog (a blog about environment, global warming, Solar energy etc). He asked me to write the first post for the blog. In my zealous attempt to write a perfect “first blog post”, I decided to send my draft post to some of my friends for review. I realised, to my horror, that almost all the comments in the feedback had a unifying theme: “You seem too conscious while writing this post”, “You are not being your usual self” etc etc. Either they sat down together and generated the feedback OR they are *right*.

So, I scrapped the original post and painfully rewrote the whole thing, but this time I tried being myself. I also jotted down some pointers on how to set-up a new blog. I’ve learned from my own experience that setting up and maintaining a blog isn’t a cakewalk. Here are some pearls of wisdom from me:

Choose your *Blog host* carefully:

There are several blog hosting services available on the world wide web. Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal et al. There are pros and cons to each of them and it would take another post to list them out in detail. So, I’ll be brief and blunt. Blogger is very easy to set-up a new blog, but it sulks like anything when you become an experienced blogger and try to expand your blogging experience beyond publishing posts. Typepad can be called as a wonderful blogging tool, but then it is definitely not ‘new-blogger’ friendly. If you try to register yourself at Typepad, it asks you your financial details upfront before you even publish your first post, which is a big put-off for newbies. LiveJournal is more of a community site, than a thorough-bred blogging site. It has many unwanted, irrelevant features; pop-up adverts, for instance get on my nerves. WordPress has a balance of everything. It doesn’t seem too daunting to a new user and has all the right features for quickly setting up a blog without any hassles. My recommendation would be: start with WordPress, and when you’ve gained enough experience blogging, try out other advanced blog hosts.

Layout:

Alright, you’ve set up your blog account and you’re all excited and ready to dive in and start writing n publishing your posts. But hang on a sec, before you start writing, you have to decide the look of your blog. Blog page layout defines the style and look of your blog. Don’t rush through this section as this will determine your taste when it comes to design. It *is* a big deal. The way your blog looks speaks a lot about you. If your blog looks like an angry fruit salad, then nobody would wanna make a stop to devour what you have to offer. The Blog hosting site offer several default templates( blog themes) to choose from. You also have the option of creating your own page-layout via HTML, CSS etc. It, really is a matter of personal preference though, and you have to use your discretion while making decisions like: whether the blog should have three column format or a two column format; how many posts should be displayed on a single page; background colour-foreground colour and so on and so forth. My mantra is to keep the design simple and elegant.

Blog Frequently:

Now you’re all set, you’ve set up your blog account and carefully chosen the layout as well. Then you write and publish your first post. From here on, the secret recipe for a popular and successful blog is to post on a regular basis. Keep your blog alive by frequently updating it. ‘What’ you write is not as important as ‘how’ you write it. Create a niche for yourself by writing about obscure topics. The more you write about it, more the people would want to read it, and slowly and steadily you’ll have a growing stream of readers. If your blog has a consistent theme, you might end up being an expert on that topic.

No Ads Till You’ve Grown:

Avoid placing ads( via Adsense or Yahoo ad service) on your blogs till you have a wide readership. Ads on your blog will only be tolerated if you’ve proved yourself an expert blogger and are worthy enough to be read regularly. Personally, I find adverts on blog page, appalling. They ruin the whole look and feel of the blog. So, first focus all your efforts into building the pillars of your blog which will appeal to a greater mass of readers and will constantly attract them to your blog. Only when you’ve reached a readership of, say 500 hits per day, you can fancy inserting advert links into your blog page.

This is what I could come up with at the moment, but I’m sure there are many more tips and tricks to successfully start your spin-off as blogger. Look them up on google and try to put them in practise. And if you’re successful, share the idea with me as well.

How Successful is your Blog ?

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long gap between my last post and this one. I was compelled to sacrifice my on-line time for something else. I’ll get to it in a short while. But first, I’d like to thank you all for responding so zealously to my previous post. It’s good to receive flak and/or appreciation for my views than to have a passive reader, whilst it also broadens my ken of understanding. This kind of dialogue helps me see the flaws in my argument as well. So, I would encourage all of you to share your thoughts and opinions.

The reason for my absence here, is that I was hooked to the hit television action drama 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland. I became so addicted to the serial, that I ended up watching 48 episodes(season 1 & 2) in 7 days. I couldn’t help it, each episode ends with a to-die-for suspense string, that I had to watch the next episode. Well, I’ve snapped out of the 24 reverie for the time being. And I’ve decided to watch seasons 3,4, 5 at a future date. As of now, I’ve got my social and on-line life back .

Coming back to the topic at hand, me and many other bloggers out there, are trying to figure out the recipe for a successful blog. What does “successful” mean in this context ? It means to have a regular and growing stream of readers; readers who not only cherish reading the blog, but also contribute their views, ideas and thoughts for each and every post. Successful also means that the readers either hate or love the author’s ruminations. There is no scope for mediocrity. Everybody likes mediocre products, but not necessarily love it. A great product always evokes extreme emotions from its users, they either ‘love‘ it or ‘hate‘ it. Similarly, readers of a great blog will either swear by it or will try to abolish it. A successful blog also converts it’s readers into passionate evangelists who spread the word to others, and before you know it your blog feed is being subscribed by several thousand RSS clients.

There are many good features of a successful blog, but the one’s which stand out are:

Original Content:

Every topic discussed, every idea written in your blog should shine with originality. There are gazillion blogs out there who just plagiarize each other. In their quest to jump into the blog bandwagon, many just copy paste ideas from other sources. The key to make your blog stand out is to always have original thoughts. Dare to take a dive into unknown topics, who says you have to be an expert to discuss anything. Just think aloud, type out your thoughts and you’d end up with ideas nobody else thought of. Try it, it is not as difficult as you think. Try brainstorming your topic of discussion, write down as many random words, sentences that come to your mind during this session. Then re-wire these random words and sentences into something meaningful, try connecting the dots to get the complete picture. The end result would be a highly original version of the topic ever written.

Make it worth reading:

Whenever I write a line or a para in my post, I imagine a fictitious parrot sitting on my shoulder, asking me “Is that line really required? Do the readers give a damn about it ?”. Validate everything you write before posting it on your blog. Ask yourself again and again, whether this will make the readers care. If your answer is yes, then your blog is in safe hands.

But, if the answer is no, then do something about it.

Keep it short:
Again, this formula manifests itself in many of my previous posts. I’ve re-iterated this idea here, because I’ve read long posts which lose their momentum half way through. The writers start to deviate from their central theme and eventually the readers attention wanders off with the theme. So, in general, it is best to have short and precise posts with strong and rich content. Though, there are few exceptions like Paul Graham or Steve Yegge.

These are the few basic characteristics that I’ve observed in many successful blogs. And if you want your blog to have that kick-ass element to it, try to inculcate these basic features.

If you’re successful in doing this, tell me how .

You’ve Got Email

 

Email ettiquetes have been discussed with much gusto in productivity books like Getting Things Done, and there are thousand posts out there on LifeHacker about this topic. So, I’m not gonna re-invent the wheel. But, I’d like to touch upon few common email fallacies that I’ve come accross and which tick me off. This post focuses mainly on business emails or work related emails, and the faults pointed out here, may or may not apply to personal emails.

Bad Grammar:

Whenever I receive an email, which is adorned with lines such as : “The bug have been in the codes for 2 months.”, I weep silently. You can get away with inferior grammar, only if you’re as hot as Salma Hayek and you have an equally sexy spanish accent. If you don’t satisfy these criterias, and you suck at basic grammar, you’re doomed, my friend. Bad grammar , not only puts a question mark on your hold over english language, but also undermines your credibility. You may be very efficient at your work, but if you write emails embellished with faulty grammar, the final impression on your colleagues or supervisors would not be so rosy. Personally, bad grammar is a big turn off for me.

Despite popular belief, not only people with vernacular background have been accussed of poor grammar, but also few Europeans and Americans have their share of occassional grammar slips. So, if you feel that your grammar needs improvement, please take special efforts to improvise your grammatical vein. My tip: read more, write often, take grammar lessons online( if required), and get this handicap out of the way, before it turns into a hindrance in your path to success.

Don’t Write a Book:

I’ve read emails which can very well be the next best seller fiction novel, if sent to a good publisher. Yeah, I tend to exaggerate my metaphors a lot, when I want to emphasize my point. Well, what I mean is, write short, precise and to-the-point mails. Use phones for long conversations/discussions, don’t type it out in a mail. Keep the mail as concise as possible and most importantly stick to the facts and the matter-on-hand.

Respect others time, people are busy, they have tight schedules, they have meetings to attend, don’t expect them to read through your saga. Infact, writing long mails has proven to be counter-productive, because it tends to conceal the actual message in the mess of unimportant and useless statements. As a rule, always limit your mails to at most 10 lines. This is what I follow, and it has proven to be very effective for eliciting the exact response from the recepient.

Know Your Audience:

It really annoys me, when I receive an email that doesn’t concern me or my work at all. I call these mails as: unintended spam. The sender of the mail, assumes that the information contained within, might be useful to me and decides to add me in the “To” or “Cc” list.

I can’t put my finger on the exact reason, why some people have the inclination to include everybody they know in the email list. They are very much aware of the fact that certain people in the list really don’t need to read the mail. Maybe they feel, it’s harmless to add couple of people. But, it just goes to show that you don’t respect others time. It might also irritate the receiver, when he realizes that the mail wasn’t intended to be dropped in his/her mailbox in the first place. So, be considerate of others time and be careful before hitting the “Send” button by making sure that you’ve included only those people who should/must read the mail.

Lastly, never write an email when your mood is rotten, or when you’re angry. You usually end up writing an emotionally charged mail, which might hamper your relationship with the receiver. I’ve burnt my fingers doing this, and it is from my experience that I advice you to strictly forbid any kind of communication when you’re furious about something.

Well, that’s all I’ve got in my sack of experience. If you’ve got any more email related wisdom, do share it with me and let me know your opinion on this topic.