permanent midnight

Fred Brooks outlines 3 essential points about systems design:

• Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration
  
• Deciding precisely what to build is the hardest part


• The focus of any organizational structure must be on solving the critical need for communication

Some of these depend on each other, which can be represented graphically:


Of course, you can't just do these things in order. Over the course of everyone actually building the thing, decisions about what it will do must be revisited.


So, to make a great system, first one must decide what it will do, then ensure that its concepts remain coherent, then communicate constantly and easily with everyone building it. At Treemo, I sit right at the second step in that list, and am working on becoming better at the third, as it is increasingly required of me.

Anyway, these concepts are software engineering 101. Every tool, process, idea, program, or proposal that crosses my desk is going to have this diagram applied to it. "Does this thing solve a communication problem and/or reinforce our software's conceptual integrity?" It seems simple, but most things don't pass. Sometimes I feel like people turn their brains off when evaluating things like this. Software is hard, yes, but process of making it is over 50 years old, and the thousands of software projects that have lived and died in that time can tell us a LOT about how to make solving that hard problem easier. We have such ignorance of our history in this industry. I've only been a professional developer for a year now, and I've reinvented hundreds of wheels both in my code and in my organization. It's exhausting sometimes.

Also worth addressing are the blocks on the bottom of the first diagram: transparent trust, shared vision, and sharp tools.

First, you're not going anywhere in any company if you can't trust those around you. The need in software for fluent, open communication cannot be met without grab-my-hand-over-a-cliff trust. Joel is right about this, even though he doesn't come out and say it. Gifting your developers with offices, decision-making authority, and free lunches is a wonderful way to create a safe environment where they feel free to create and speak.

Second, everyone making software must grasp their role in both the company and the development process. They must share that vision for their role and be enthusiastic about it, because if they're not, why are they working there? Being on-message is just as important for testers as it is salesmen.

Finally, sharp tools must be available to everyone who needs them. Michelangelo was known to work so quickly and so hard that he would work all night with a candle on his head, chiseling furiously until the marble dust choked the air of his workshop. How many chisels do you think he owned? When you look at the David, do you wonder at how much he spent on having them sharpened? This also ties in with the trust issue: put a fast computer in that office.

Now, to build a company wise enough that I don't have to spend Sundays thinking about this stuff...

Apparantly I'm holding up the entire development process at work with one major feature that's taking, like, 100 years to code.

The stress has so far caused neck cramps, digestive trouble, shooting nerve pains, loss of appetite, and fatigue.

I swear it's got to be something more than just work, either that or I'm horrible at my work/life balance.

I need a spring break. I'm starting to miss being bored.

(On stress.)

The weeks approaching a release feel like looking at the 10-day forecast and seeing "42F, 90% chance of precipitation" 10 times.

Your hibernation instincts kick in something strong, but you can't sleep right. The overwhelming urge is to make everything to just go away.

But you have to go through it. The puddles are deep, but the power is out. There's nowhere else to go.

Thanks, everyone, for your encouragement. It's good.

I come home and hop online, thinking there will be a world of content that has appeared since this morning. Unfortunately, I've been online all day at work, and in the 20 minutes it takes to walk home, not much happens.

I left the cyclical crunch times of school for the occasional crunch times of a startup. The assignments are different. They all have to work completely, and if they don't, you will sit there and fix them until they do. If you want more time, you have to fight for it. If a requirement is unclear, you have to talk about it. The code you write has to meet standards, and copying other designs is encouraged. Quality software engineering and documentation is equally important as working code. In other words, it's school backwards. And it's hard to quantify that as bad, as school assignments do an excellent job of exposing you to an enormous range of programming and architectural concepts, but they give little perspective as to how their application will play out.
Documentation is an oft-cited and excellent example. Docs are rarely expected (and sometimes discouraged!) in school assignments. But if you don't document your code at work, you will be fired, and your ex-co-workers will toast their newfound freedom from your shitty, unintelligible sludge. If you're bad at it, they may put up with you, but only if you improve.
While I was told these things in college, few assignments put it into action. I learned more about documentation from a one-quarter technical writing elective in community college than in 3 years in Western CS.
I complained extensively about this in my major review, but going out into the working world has made it clearer every day.

Mike V, one of my senior project teammates, had an interview with us today. He did very well, unfortunately he comes at an awkward time for us as the boss will be gone a lot for the next two weeks, and we're in the middle of a crunch for CTIA. I hope he doesn't find a better offer...

12 hours of coding today, and I gotta get off the keyboard and go to bed. Thank god it's no less than a mile between here and work.

Enjoy the changes, because routine will set in before you know it.

I graduated on 10 June, 2006. I spent a week in Bellingham sorting things out and packing. On the 17th and 18th, I said goodbye to Bellingham and moved the last of my belongings into what is now my parents' house in Lynnwood. I spent a week moving what I could and preparing for a large LAN party on the 24th. The party went well, minus a few guests. On Sunday I dealt with the exhaustion, hot weather and excess sunlight... poorly. Yesterday I moved my waterbed out of my room and into the basement, along with alll the rest of the furniture that had been displaced by the party. Last night I slept in my childhood room on a different bed for the first time in over 10 years.

This morning I drove to Ballard for my new job at Hyperboy. The work environment is very similar to HITS, it's a small office with relaxed management. Typical startup. It'll be a fine 2 weeks.

When I first moved back here I felt very displaced. I still miss Bellingham, especially on sunny days like today, when having 3 lakes within a short drive was invaluable, and driving to Ballard in traffic with no A/C is awfully tedious. I've been walking around the neighborhood a lot, trying to get a feel for the place again, and striving to connect with the decades of memory that live here. I visited my 5th grade classroom for the first time in years, very haunting. Walking through all the housing where there used to be forest, telling myself the stories about the mink farms, abandoned country clubs, and wildness that marked the edges of my childhood, has been theraputic. I don't know how much longer I will recognize my home. As I was vacuuming the basement after the party, I realized that this was the same basement I would build blanket forts in, the same bar I built enormous Lego creations on, the same fireplace that has kept me hauling firewood in winters as long as I can remember. That TV stand was my grandmother's, we got it when she died. She had it in a tiny apartment on Broadway in Everett, along with my fold-out desk and stereo cabinet. They looked different there.

I've lived here since I was small enough to stand on the ledges in the basement. Returning to it has been strange. Were the circumstances different, I'm not sure I would've chosen to.

But it's true that I would've had to move out sometime, and my room can't stay a time capsule forever. If I take the time to live here again, maybe when this stops being my home we can part peacefully.

It has been a lonely two days. I have been thinking a lot about my future. On 17 July I will board a plane to London (from which my parents have just returned), and shortly thereafter Venice. I haven't been thinking a lot about this trip yet, as there will be time for that soon enough. I'm very preoccupied with the years that stretch out afterwards, where I must reconcile with the life I abandoned 3 years ago. It hasn't exactly been waiting for me, and I intend to find what's left of it and see what still matters.