Envelope / Develope

The oddity of the software profession is about reading and reusing the code. How often have you heard about reading code or reading design books, stepping outside of your realm of knowledge and sniffing at what other people are trying to resolve? I have to admit my book-wormish attitude because my childhood was pestered with a voracity to read and experience through others' life experiences. I used to buy books of edgy authors and enjoy their forays in brutal wordy experiences or carnivals of words. I miss sometimes the adventure of reading unheard construction of words with a flavor resonating with me which is hard to explain. But that's enough! Lately, my experiences were oriented in the business realm of things. Books like "Build to last", "Crossing the chasm", "The black swan". We were raised to believe the information is the answer to anything. In communism the more you knew about the "real" map of the social network t...

My continuous quest is to find out, gather info and go further that others have done before, rise on their shoulder and see/imagine/try/ruminate from their peaks. It's not a big philosophy, it's one about economy of energy and as one friend of mine said it "don't reinvent the square wheel!". In a lot of industries, philosophies like this go a long way in their development. You survive because your senses are adapted to feel where the wind blows and you know the trade, what to avoid, whom to ally with and the whole mechanism invented by the "specialists" to protect their turf. Is nothing special, just a little adaptation, agility, Darwinism survivor behavior. But for all this to happen, you need the basics, the roots of the industry, the history, the processes and their evolution (like in law Kramer vs. Michigan State ). A few days ago, I began to search for a framework which could generate a GUI interface from an XML file and have a preview function,...

This post is to complain, complain, complain... I'm a software engineer, senior, I'd say, and my continuous gripe for at least a few years is about software development cycles, methodologies and implementations. And I'm contracting ...., no strings attached. I would like to work in a real "software engineering" environment, people caring about what they deliver, how they deliver and proud of their work. It didn't happen for a long, long time. People are complacent, eager for a short, good buck, learning the politic ladder in corporations and teaming for a net social environment where their laziness to be protected. I had stepped up in a small company, manufacturing an embedded hardware device, struggling to implement a perpetual tcp/ip protocol for communication. I don't want to mention about sophisticated and complicated development cycles here, I want to expose simple, normal ways (agile) to lighten your life. But let's continue, it's hard to deb...

Have you seen the recent jumps of the gas price? Just thinking about the decisions and policies followed by the managers of big gas distributors, I wonder who is losing here? Let's suppose a hike in the price of the barrel of petrol happened. How late the effect of this raise will ripple in the real market? What if some companies decide to not buy in that specific day but continue to gauge the price for the operators ? If the whole process of extraction/distribution/selling/buying is a continuous flow is obvious that someone should take the brunt. The small consumers, like me or you could skip/postpone to buy gas for a week or a few days waiting for these extra cents, but what happens with people whose life is interlaced with the price of the gas? Funny game played by the gas distribution companies! How could you explain that you could have a few prices in the same day? Add for Canadians a stronger dollar than before and I wonder, should this small advantage pass on consumers? Alt...

After some experiences on photo-blog sites, I reached an agreement to vent my frustrations along with other blogers, here, on blogspot. Some pictures allowed, though ...

Do you do what you like or what the labor market in your specialty is demanding at that moment? Where are you (career wise) when the economy does flourish or plunge? These questions remind me of the importance of the birth month for the hockey players (see Malcom Gladwell, "The tipping point"). Your development stages as an individual could come in collision with the economy cycles and your life could be doomed just because you were born in an unlucky year. I remember reading about the lost generation in Japan: young people without any chances to get a job because the long recession coincided with their start in the labor market. Without prospects, with a stagnant economy they struggled to find jobs and opportunities were not existent as the older generation clutch their seats and didn't want to make room for the "new blood" in economy. The situation prolonged the agony of a lost generation which saw their dreams crushed in tough economic times. With a bit of a ...