Cargo Cult Thinking

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
— Richard Feynman

 

Many of the problems shared by business management and software engineering I mentioned in the previous post stem from Cargo Cult Thinking. As mentioned by noted physicist Richard Feynman in his famous speech to CalTech students that even in these modern times, people resort to blindly following how other people do things in the hopes of reaping the same results.

Dr. Feynman used cargo cults to criticize how many scientists fail to follow the scientific method by merely going through the steps of experimentation but not making sure that their process is scientifically sound. The Halo Effect uses cargo cults in the same manner by exposing the mistakes made by best selling management books in their research. The book basically tells the reader to ignore all those pages detailing how the latter conducted its research because no matter how “rigorous” they were conducted, they were never sound to begin with i.e. there were critical flaws in their process from the start.

Cargo cult thinking in the field of software engineering doesn’t even bother with claiming to follow the scientific method. As Steve McConnell writes in his “From the Editor” article in IEEE Software, March/April 2000, some managers are deluded to think that simply following the culture of highly successful companies will result in radical improvements in productivity. On the smaller scale, many novice programmers (and sadly, software teams in general) are deluded to follow cargo cult programming practices without even knowing why they are used successfully by other coders in the first place.

In my opinion, cargo cult thinking isn’t that bad… if only one or two people are affected. As they usually fail in a spectacular fashion, they make the affected people think twice before doing something like that again. If an entire group, or worse, an entire company is blindly following cargo cult thinking… well… either you ramp up your risk management or you start making popcorn for the drama that will unfold. :D

Business Management and SE

Yesterday I was bored and uninspired. To make up for it, I went to Makati today with a simple plan in mind: find a good book and read a couple of chapters over a large cup of green tea latte.

There were a couple of good books in National Bookstore Glorietta 5 and Powerbooks Greenbelt 4, but Fully Booked Greenbelt 5 had both a 20% off on all books and a Starbucks bar(?) inside their store so I ended up with FB. The problem with FB was that they didn’t have the books I wanted to read, How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Millionaire Next Door, both Personal MBA books (with so many flashy business books in bookstores nowadays, that list serves as an easy way to separate the chaff from the wheat).

I was supposed to go for some random “bestseller” business book when I saw hidden in a corner (literally) The Halo Effect. The first thing that popped into my head was:

Personal MBA tells me that this is the only book worth buying here, so I might as well buy it.

And so I picked up the book, and immediately brought it to the counter to pay for it. Then I went over to Starbucks, ordered my latte, and started reading the book. A few chapters later, I was telling myself:

Good thing I trusted Personal MBA.

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The Halo Effect has a simple message, namely, be skeptical about management bestsellers. But the reasons the book presents as well as the implications of the message covers a broad range of issues, and so I can’t talk about all of them in a single post. Now that’s good for me because I have enough material from a single book for at least 5 more posts. :D

Anyway, I won’t be tackling the book’s message in this post. I’ll just talk about something interesting from the first few pages of the book.

Continue reading “Business Management and SE”

Computer Stores in Metro Manila

In this day and age, computer stores are everywhere. If you are serious about computers, however, you will know that most of these stores have very high mark-ups (especially the ones in malls) and usually carry old or low-end (“mainstream”) stuff. This post will cover where I get the “good stuff” in Metro Manila.

In this day and age, computer stores are everywhere. If you are serious about computers, however, you will know that most of these stores have very high mark-ups (especially the ones in malls) and usually carry old or low-end (“mainstream”) stuff.

This post will cover where I get the “good stuff” in Metro Manila.

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You’re reading this blog post so I assume that you’re online (there’s a very low chance that this will be published in a local publication, but I’m not betting on it :P ). Being online, your first stop should always be TipidPC.com.

Even if you’re wary of buying second hand stuff from people you don’t know, TipidPC is still a valuable resource. It’s practically the only place you could find people in our country selling hard to find computer parts. There are also stores which post their prices there in real time, giving you an idea of the “correct” retail prices of computer parts. You could also get opinions from forum members on parts — they’ll even tell you where to find that part for less.

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As for “traditional” computer stores, there are only a few computer stores worth going to.

Every enthusiast will tell you about (in)famous store PC Options at Gilmore. Don’t listen when other stores say they have “the lowest prices”; other than TipidPC, PCO has the lowest prices for parts, hands down. And these are not just your mainstream parts, they carry high-end enthusiast parts too.

There is one catch, though. PCO is infamous for its inefficient system of handling customers. I’ve never bought something from PCO without waiting at least an hour to get it. So before buying something from PCO, ask yourself: “Is waiting for 2 hours for a P500 discount worth it?”

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On the opposite end of the inefficiency spectrum is PC Express. They’re not as cheap as PCO, but their stores are pretty efficient with multiple ordering booths and chairs for customers waiting for their orders to be processed. They also have a lot more branches than PCO, which is good for those who live far away from Gilmore.

Another good thing about PCX is their price list is available online in the front page of their website. There are two types of price lists, the SRP and the Promo price list. You use the latter if you’re paying by cash; they give a discount considering credit card fraud is widespread around here.

The only problem IMO with PCX is that they don’t carry a lot of enthusiast level parts. For cool stuff, you’ll have to go to PCO or the next store in this list.

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Somewhere in between PCO and PCX is PCHub. They’re cheaper than PCX but not as cheap as PCO. They’re not as efficient with dealing with customers as PCX but they’re not as inefficient as PCO either.

Like PCX, they have an online price list in TipidPC. They’re actually better than PCX in this department because their list is updated in real time, whereas in PCX you have to call to verify the price or if they have stocks available in a certain branch.

Like PCO, they carry high end stuff in their stores. They’re also better in this department because they carry enthusiast coolers like Arctic Cooling and Thermalright and “gamer” peripherals from Razer.

IMO, PCHub is the best store to go to in Gilmore, followed by PCX. Only go to PCO on off-peak hours/days or if you really need to save a couple of hundred pesos.

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The problem with the three stores above is that most of their wares are hidden in their store room. That’s ok for internal parts, but for external peripherals, looks matter.

Here’s where Octagon and CD-R King steps in.

Octagon is not a store that I would normally recommend to people. Their markups are just too high. For example, the monitor I bought last month, a Samsung T220, costs 17k in their stores. PCHub sells it for a lot less.

However, Octagon’s open supermarket-style setup showcases their products for all to see. You could easily compare how keyboards and mice with each other in this setup.

They also carry some rare stuff in their shelves. I bought my Japanese-made mouse pad for optical mice in Octagon (I’d love to get a Razer one from PCHub, but seriously, 1-2k for a mouse pad is just too much).

As for CD-R King, everyone knows it’s good for only two things: writable media and cheap (disposable) gadgets. What people don’t know is that they also carry rare parts like RAM sinks and thermal compounds.

Enthusiasts should consider going to the CD-R King site to look for rare stuff if searching TipidPC turns up nothing. I myself use a USB KVM from CD-R King, a part that you could not find in any other store locally.

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So there you have it, the best places to buy computer parts in Metro Manila. Honorable mentions go to PC Corner and RSun, both of which have competitive prices and online price lists.

The Complicator's Gloves

Here’s another story that I re-posted somewhere else before: The Complicator’s Gloves.

Good software is constantly under attack on several fronts. First, there are The Amateurs who somehow manage to land that hefty contract despite having only finished “Programming for Dummies” the night before. Then there are The Career Amateurs who, having found success after that first contract (read: taking the client’s money and not being sued for developing a useless product), actually manage to make a career out of repeating that experience. And then there are The Complicators, the side that tempts the best of us to join their ranks, even if only for project or two.

There are some so deeply embedded within The Complicators, that they’ve acquired a sort of sixth-sense: the ability to find meta-problems (“a problem with the process of creating a solution for the actual problem”) in virtually any solution. As we’ve all seen, the systems that these developers create often end up as a barely functional application comprised of a Matryoshka-doll-like nesting of problems and solutions. Given the chance to solve problems outside of Information Technology, I’ve often wondered how The Complicators might respond. Fortunately, Mike has given us that opportunity …

 

As programmers, we usually have multiple ways to solve problems. As computer scientists, we are aware that we must determine which of those solutions are elegant solutions. Unfortunately, due to our flawed educational backgrounds and personal experiences, our definition of “elegant” is usually “overcomplicated solutions” or “our solutions” (or both).

As software engineers, we must unlearn that potentially dangerous way of thinking. Elegance for us should always begin with simplicity.

So the next someone suggests a complicated solution for a simple problem, always keep in mind that that problem might be solved by “gloves”. (Unless, of course, you’re not going to be affected by that complicated solution. :D )