Why are we still using Outlook Web Access, an internet email client that is seven years old and terrible design even for seven years ago. It pains me that my office uses a program that was bad even by the standards of 2003 when it came out. But the real question here is… why the hell hasn’t microsoft updated this piece of crap at all? Seriously? The company has billions of dollars, couldn’t they spare a quick million to rewrite the damn thing? Hell, for a mere $2 million, right now, I’ll quit my job and go write it for them. It should take about eight weeks to produce something better. Eight weeks… tops. And i’ll even write it to support IE.

Lately I’ve been the subject of what I call developer drift.

Developer Drift is the process by which an unchallenged developer slowly moves from one project to the next. The project may be in house or external or something completely fabricatec by the developer’s mind, but it basically means a developer is less interested in the current project than the project over the horizon. It’s the “Grass is always greener” truism made concrete in software engineering.

For me, this has taken the form of the fact that our customer wants really boring user interfaces which I can crank out like they are nothing. Problem is, I almost never crank them out, because they are meaningless and I never feel challenged/creative by them. (For me challenged=creative.) So I take forever to implement them and tend to make a lot of excuses on why this is taking so long. I feel justified in why it takes so long in the fact that when I am challenged, I really do crank out the code at an extraodinary rate which borders on the obscene when compared to average developers. I’m very prolific when I want to be.

The same thing was true when I was back in college studying English Literature. I could crank out a paper that I found interesting in no time flat, but assign me something that was pedantic and I’d sooner rip my own teeth out with a spoon (”because it will hurt more”).

So the real question I’m trying to find an answer to is “How do you deal with developer drift?” How do you stop people from losing interest when they are bored because the project has become boring? A project I used to work on is suffering from this very problem… they want to keep the team together, but the more boring stuff they do, the less likely they are to be able to keep the team together? Is there a way for this project to challenge it’s developers at the same time as doing boring things? Would contests or “feats of skill” help keep things from getting stale? Or should they just accept this as the life cycle of the developer, assume that people are going to drift away, and prepare for the next generation?

You tell me… how does your project deal with developer drift?

“The simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem,” – Mike Beltzner (Mozilla)

The purpose of a User Interface is information. Whether it be delivery of that information, manipulation of that information, or discovery of that information is secondary to the information itself. It’s that simple and as soon as your recognize that you can begin to build compelling experiences with the least amount of crap.

Yet time and again people whom build UI’s are forced by people whom do not build UI’s to add more. They want more widgets or charts or colors or fonts, more stuff on their site. And the more stuff you put on their site, the harder it becomes for the user to see the information they are seeking. The hard it becomes to see the forest through the trees as the saying goes.

Every time I build a UI for someone I ask them one simple question: What’s the most important thing you need to convey? Whatever that is, that piece should be 75% of the interface. I would say that in the twenty or so interfaces, only one project has ever answered that succinctly. Usually you get this long diatribe about how you should put X here and Y here and the menu needs to go here in 24 point comic sans ms. It’s usually at that point I wish I could just walk away from the project… and live on a beach in Guam. But I love my internet access too much to give it up for the beach lifestyle. Maybe in another year or two.

So the point is, that the people in charge of projects are under some sort of assumption that more is better. If you ever are in doubt of this, go look at Amazon’s front page. Too much crap to wade through just to get to a search box or your wish list or whatever. But the reality is less is better. Less is more usable. Less is faster.

So my question to you is, how do you take a customer that wants to add more trees and show them the forest?

I’m back baby! After several months of not posting, I’ve finally managed to get thing setup so I can post from work. Good news for all you out there whom have missed my diatribes on the world in which I live. You know who you are, my adoring fans, the unwashed legions of nerddom. Rejoice, for I have returned.

I’m an ANT guy. I’ve been using ANT since 1999. It’s amazingly powerful, amazingly useful and very flexible… and I’ve never once written my own ANT task. Just using the ANT tasks available or out there in the community I have been able to build hundreds of software projects.

Now, of course, everyone says, “Go Maven”. So I went Maven… and it sucked.

See, I have very strong feelings about Frameworks. (Not to confuse you here, but Maven, like ANT, is a Build Framework.) The problem with 99% of all Frameworks out there is that they force you into a specific way of doing something. “But that’s the whole point,” you scream at me. And I agree, that’s the point… until the moment you need to do something else.

Now, I use frameworks all the time in my software development, we all do. There’s one listed over on the right side in my links section that I actually endorse. So am I not hypocritical for deriding frameworks in one breathe while using them in another? Of course I am, but here’s where i’ll caveat it… I use frameworks that provide the least limitation on me doing new things. Maven, as an example is a rigid framework. Doing something new with it is difficult challenge. ANT on the other hand, while limiting, isn’t nearly as limited.

So here’s AREI’s Framework Measurement Testing System. First, evaluate a framework for the project you are working one, say building a Java Swing application. Next, evaluate the framework for another, completely different project you might work on in the future, say building a Website. How does the framework stack up for both things? Finally, consider what’s going to happen when you need to take the framework beyond it’s scope into new places. How accepting of that path is it?

Here’s some examples:

I had an ANT script that would append together a bunch of .JS files and then minify the entire set. Worked like a champ. The project I was on decided let’s give Maven a try instead of ANT. So I had to come up with a way to do the same thing in Maven. Two weeks of work later I ended up just calling ANT from inside of Maven.

Anyway, this post was really meant as just a simple link to an awesome blog posting that unleashes some much needed fury on Maven. But I got a little carried away in the intro.

So in summation, Maven sucks. Pick a framework that you can change. Damn the man! Save Empire!

I laid down some funky techno grooves. Check it: http://inudge.net/inudge#/ft8r

I have had a Google Wave Developer account for a few weeks now, but haven’t had the time to start developing with it.  Soon though.  Anyway, the point I was going to make is that recently a coworker just also got his account and he’s the first person I’ve had a live conversation with and well… it’s just fun. Yes, there are bugs and some of them are down right annoying, but once you get past those, the system really is just fun to play with.

I just finished upgrading the site to the new version of WordPress (2.8) which was a bit painful because the automatic update feature in wordpress died halfway through.  So I had to recover and manual do the upgrade, which once I figured it out was fine.

On somewhat related news, in the process of upgrading I noticed some hacker has been dropping crap into my file space.  Hi Hacker!  All crap has since been removed along with the usual processes one undertakes when they discover a hacker.

Google announced yesterday a new offering called Google Wave.  There is an excellent article at TechChrunch that gives a complete overview.  All I can say is: THIS IS HUGE PEOPLE. The concept of Google Wave, the underlying idea is exactly the right step that the web and the internet needs to take. It’s a combination of Email, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Transparency, Collaboration, Wiki, Media sharing, and so much more.  Oh, and it’s an Open API and Open Source to boot.

If you’ve ever talked tech with me in the last three years and we’ve had the discussion about what is next in technology, then we’ve had a very similar discussion about the concepts behind Google Wave.  I’m not claiming Google has once again stolen my idea, but what I will claim is that there clearly is a need for this type of product that I saw and google saw and others saw as well.

Two things in particular I want to call your attention to that make Google Wave a huge idea:

1). Adhoc groups… What adhoc grouping really does for you is to let people create internet groups as easily as they create real world groups.  Think of it this way… when you walk into your work place break room and two other people walk in and the three of you start talking, you have created a group.  It’s fast in the real world, why can it not be like that in the internet world? For most of the internet when you want to form a group and start working together there’s a fairly large investment in creating the meta systems the group needs: setting up a mailing list, setting up forums, setting up a media store, setting up a user database, etc etc.  It’s a pain in the ass really, and it make setting up a group fairly non-trivial.  To some degree, Yahoo Groups and Google Groups automates a lot of that, but then you still have to go through the effort of getting people to join etc.

What Google Wave does is to make group creation simple and almost instantaneous.  Basically, you create a group by dragging a bunch of contacts together and off you go.  You can immediately begin discussion, expand the group, whatever.  Additionally, if you need other tools for that group like a map or a document or some other thing, you can add a widget or a robot to participate in that  group and boom, you have more functionality to fill the groups need.

2) The second feature that is huge for me is transparency.  Transparency is the notion behind Twitter in that you broadcast snippets of your activities out to the world and everyone can see what you are doing.  This is the beginning of transparency though.  To take it further you need to automate transparency such that as you do things, they automatically are published.  Of course, this brings up privacy concerns, but I think there are simple ways to solve this.

I know that Wave has some level of transparency, but it’s still to early to tell how much.  I suspect that even if this is an opt in version of transparency, like Twitter, that soon there will be robots and widgets (the extensions to Wave) that will automate a lot of this functionality.

The point is, though, that transparecny can be a huge social tool… but more importantly it could be a huge business tool.  And the company that sees this is going to get a huge edge over the company that does not.

Anyways, that’s my thoughts on Google Wave.  You should efinately check it out.

Why am I never amazed when a software engineer wants to add complexity?  By this I am talking about all these abstraction layers of tools and frameworks and engines.  These tools/frameworks/engines are supposedly designed to save developers time, but really just add complexity to the stack and in the end don’t end up saving time at all.   Now, instead of just knowing programming language X I need to know Programing Language X and Abstraction Layer Y. How is working in two technologies easier than working in one?

I know some will argue that “Well you only really need to work in Abstraction Layer Y.”  Except that is never just the case.  Abstraction Layer Y is great until you have to do something that is outside the basic cases of Abstraction Layer Y.  Then you have to go back to working in Programming Language X.  Suddenly you’re working in both.

Don’t believe me?  Consider the case of Google Web Toolkit (GWT)… GWT lets you write web pages in GWT’s Java Toolkit.  It removes the need to work in HTML and Javascript and CSS.  Except, well, CSS is still use to provide your sites look and feel.  Oh, and you still use HTML inside the GWT code.  Oh, and you want to do something a little more complex than what GWT offers? Looks like you’re going to have to embed Javascript into your GWT code as well. So, instead of just having to work with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, now I have to work with HTML, CSS, Javascript and GWT.

Seriously, it’s basic math.  X + Y > X where Y is greater than 0. Yet time and again engineers are all gung ho about Abstraction Layer Y and I suspect it’s for one reason: Fear.  They’re afraid that they will have to do work, they’re afraid that their incompetence will be visible, they’re afraid that their value to the company will be realized. Fear is an extremely strong emotion and it can lead to panic, chaos and distrust.  But underneath it all is pure cowardice.  Cowardice to get things done, cowardice to admit your shortcomings, and cowardice to realize your own mediocrity.

And the worst kind of cowards are the ones that want to do trade studies.  Let us spend all of the budget and time for the project on comparing Abstraction X to Abstraction Y to Abstraction Z before we choose one.  Don’t worry though, we’ll have plenty of time and money after we run out of time and money to build the software.  Shouldn’t take more than two weeks, right?  The engineers that want to do this are the ones with the most to fear.  I believe that they would rather do trade studies than write code.  If you don’t want to write code, if you don’t LOVE to write code, you’re not a software engineer… you’re middle management.  You need to realize your fate and go work for the federal government wasting tax payer resources.

So, is there ever a case where Abstraction Layer Y makes sense? Probably, but it’s far, far less frequently than one might imagine.  Sometimes an abstraction layer can actually achieve the nirvanic state that it set out to do.  It’s kind of this sweet spot between being overly simple and overly bloated.  And I suspect that of the thousands of Abstraction Layer Y’s out there, only 1 or 2 have actually succeeded in finding that spot.

And yes, this is a little bit of a rant against Abstraction Layers… but it’s not a rant against the people who write Abstraction Layers.  The people who write Abstraction Layers are freaking genius.  Basically they have identified the fears of software engineers and are exploiting it to make money or recognition or whatever their particular motivation is.  This is brilliant in my opinion and I seriously need to start working at one of these companies.

To conclude: Abstraction Layer Y sucks and is a waste of time.  Just write the code yourself.  It’s not that hard.  If you think it is that hard, you need to quit your job now and go manage the fast food restaurant you were always destined to manage.