Brain Dumps

Zed Shaw – The ACL is Dead

I wasn’t able to post one daily entry yesterday because the net connection was down at Lex and Flori’s place. Here’s the make up post.

Steak and strippers, baby!

I wasn’t able to post one daily entry yesterday because the net connection was down at Lex and Flori’s place. Here’s the make up post.

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Zed Shaw is (in)famous within online dev circles for two things: his rant on Rails (which didn’t even spare Dave Thomas :D ) and his talk at CUSEC about how the corporate world screws with developers. He has retracted the former so here’s the latter instead:

Zed Shaw – The ACL is Dead from CUSEC on Vimeo.

It’s funny, informative, and depressing. A definite “must watch” for every developer who works or plans to work in the corporate world.

Public Transportation and Trailblazing

Just came back from a product demo of a local distributor of computers in Eastwood, Libis. Will post my observations once I get the go signal for posting in Sugoi (which fyi, still has Philhosting problems :( ).

I also have to leave for Greenbelt at 6pm so this daily entry will not be as “well researched” as the previous posts.

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It was my first time to go to Eastwood City. Unlike your average twenty-something yuppie though, I did not take a cab to the place.

I’m not a fan of taxis. Unless the destination is not reachable by other means of public transportation (e.g. jeepneys and buses are prohibited to take the optimal route to the place) or I have a reason to arrive at my destination ASAP, I always prefer to take the latter over the former.

I don’t really know why I don’t prefer taxis. Maybe it’s because the fare’s a lot higher than taking a jeepney or a bus and this conflicts with the indoctrination about my family’s lower class status that I received when I was young. But that doesn’t hold up to the fact that I don’t mind spending the same amount on random purchases of food and drinks.

I know it has nothing to do with annoying drivers. I personally don’t mind them. I even take the front seat instead of the back seat to increase the chance of getting to chat with the driver. If it’s a decent driver, even a short conversation would give me good insights on how the common Filipino perceives the issues in our nation. If it’s not a good driver, I could probably steer the conversation to gutter humor for the lulz.

The most likely reason why I don’t prefer taxis is because it’s not cool. Which is a cooler answer to “How did you get here?”: “I took a taxi”, or “I took a bus from xxx, then took a jeepney to xxx, then walked the rest of the way here. :D” Seriously though, the “appeal” thing still sticks. I’m a pragmatist, and riding a taxi instead of taking a jeepney or a bus is just too hedonistic for my tastes.

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Anyway, back to going to Eastwood.

Ok, taxi’s out of the question, so how do I get to Eastwood using public transportation without a guide? Simple: I’ll just activate the “Trailblazing” skill I learned when I was a Boy Scout. :D

Trailblazing isn’t really that fancy, it’s basically just map reading, knowing your orientation (e.g. where’s the north), and some other things that will help you reach your destination. Ideally, if I would “trailblaze” a path to Eastwood from Cubao, I’d walk all the way to Eastwood and take note of the public transportation available along the way. I’ll just take public transportation on my subsequent trips.

Walk from Cubao (Farmer’s) to Eastwood? Srsly?

I’m not kidding. I’ve done this a lot of times before. Just ask my friends.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints (I have to be there by 9am) and the fact that I’m going to carry a freaking 20lbs bag to the place, walking was also not an option. So I had to find out how to reach the place by jeepney.

Fortunately, the first Google search hit was relevant to my interests (taga FTI ako… well, not technically but you get the picture). The best advice was to either take a jeepney from Cubao to Libis or jeepney from Ortigas to Rosario then Rosario to Eastwood.

I confirmed with my parents that both routes are ok. My mom gave an alternate route: go to Market-Market then take an FX to Eastwood. Unfortunately, I still haven’t gone to Market-Market yet and two trailblazing “quests” in a day would be too much for me. :P

And so I took the most convenient route, the FTI – Cubao – Eastwood route. I got to the place with only two hitches: I was a little late (due to traffic), and I didn’t expect that the loading/unloading area for Rosario jeepneys was really behind Ali Mall. That was a 900 meter walk with a 20lbs backpack. D:

On the plus side, I still got to use my map reading skills to be familiar with the place. The orientation was also a bit useful – even after a couple of right and left turns, I was still sure that I took the right jeepney because the shadows confirm that we were really going east.

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That’s my post for today. Tomorrow’s Wii party day at Lex and Flori‘s so the next post will either be posted early afternoon or in the evening via laptop.

TODO: Change “between heaven and earth” tag to something less pretentious, but still conveys the ironies and contradictions happening in my life due to my nature as an unpredictable educated lower-class citizen.

Tips for New Trainers/Teachers

One of the things I was glad to have experienced in my previous company was my stint as a technical instructor. It was there that I found out how fun teaching can be.

I’d admit, I like teaching for the usual reasons too. Being able to impart knowledge to other people is an inherently fulfilling experience; the interactions between your students are just icing on the cake. Teaching also allowed me to improve my craft — there were many instances where my students have asked questions that I wasn’t able to answer immediately, regardless of my experience on the topic itself.

But I guess the biggest reason I like teaching is because I want to prove my previous teachers wrong. Whether it’s about their flawed material or about their inefficient approaches to teaching, my main mission as a teacher was to strive to avoid making their mistakes.

Given the post-course feedback that I have received, I think I did pretty well for a novice trainer. I’ve avoided a lot of pitfalls but it was inevitable that I fell into some of them too.

My mistakes pointed out by my students were disheartening, but none of them affected me as much as a certain article hidden away in our intranet: Kathy Sierra’s “Ten Tips for New Trainers/Teachers“.

Just because you’ve used lots of software doesn’t mean you can write code. Just because you’ve been in lots of buildings doesn’t mean you can be an architect. And just because you’ve logged a million frequent flyer miles doesn’t mean you can fly a plane.

But if that’s all ridiculously obvious, why do some people believe that just because they’ve taken classes, they can teach? (Or just because they’ve read lots of books, they can write one?) The problem isn’t thinking that they can do it, the problem is thinking they can do it without having to learn, study, or practice.

That article showed me how wrong some of my teaching approaches were. To add insult to injury, I found that article after my final stint as a trainer. I never got to apply those tips before I resigned.

Still, if you’re expecting to be put in a training position anytime soon, those tips can be a good starting point, helping you avoid the common mistakes made by trainers.

The Parable of the Two Programmers

The Parable of the Two Programmers is my first post in one of my other blogs. Even though it was written almost 25 years ago, this “parable” is still applicable to the software industry today.

Once upon a time, unbeknownst to each other, the “Automated Accounting Applications Association” and the “Consolidated Computerized Capital Corporation” decided that they needed the identical program to perform a certain service.

Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their problem.

Meanwhile, Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level programmer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he pretended.

The Parable of the Two Programmers is my first post in one of my other blogs. Even though it was written almost 25 years ago, this “parable” is still applicable to the software industry today.

Unlike normal parables, however, this one covers more than one issue in the industry. These issues will give me enough writing material for about 5 or more posts in the future, thus allowing me to procrastinate on writing for today. :D

In the meantime, just read the story. Try not to get too depressed about the ending, though. :P

The Fisherman and the Businessman

Back when I was in high school, I once read a book in the religious store next to my alma mater. I’ve already forgotten why I was there or why I was reading a book at that time. Regardless, the book’s title was something like “500 stories you can use”. It was a book filled with short inspirational or funny stories gathered by a priest for other priests to use in their mass sermons.

One of the more moving stories in the book was about a businessman talking to a fisherman.

One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family.

“You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman, “you should be working rather than lying on the beach!”

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”

“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer.

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling.

The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.

The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.

“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.

The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”

Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?

There are variations to this story, but I like this better because it had the businessman pissed off near the end.

This story illustrates the importance of knowing what you really want to do in life — you’ll never realize that what you’re doing day-in-day-out actually means little to your future until it’s too late.

On the management side of things, this story shows why managers (businessman) treating their employees (fisherman) the way they want to be treated themselves doesn’t work in practice. That interpretation of the golden rule (which many well-meaning managers use) doesn’t work when each person has different priorities or different ways to look at life.