19 November 2012
Openness
On 11 November 2012, my first patch to jQuery-UI landed in the project. It was not the world's greatest pull request, nor was it the best code ever written (by a long shot). But it was important. Not because I get my name on a change log somewhere, or that I will now conquer to world with my open source prowess. Its important because it is another tiny step in the massive open source snowball that wins. It wins big. The open web as we know it has spiraled out of openness and open source projects. The documentation that I turn to regularly and have contributed to is open and invites new contributors each day. There are countless open initiatives in the world these days - and by no means are these all software related - these encourage the scientist in us all to submit pull requests, change direction and assert for the greater good. If you have a passion, pursue it. That is all.
07 November 2012
Homework
Recently I was tasked by my son's pre-k teacher to present a paragraph that describes my occupation... in a way that 4 year olds will understand. This really put things into perspective for me, more than I thought it would. At first I think of what I might describe to my parents: "Software Engineer: I write code for web applications and databases"... No. So what is it that I do?
I was then reminded of an interview question I once had where I was asked: "How would you describe a database to your grandmother?" These sorts of questions may seem silly to some developers, but I find them to be a great exercise. These questions help us to target and focus on what it is we really do, and how our end users or clients might perceive what someone in the software profession might be thinking. So I thought of the answer provided in that interview where I made the analogy of a jewelry box that helps to organize and sort jewelry for efficient placement and retrieval.
How does a jewelry box translate to pre kindergarten children? Well I tried to avoid an abstract analogy and simplified it by stating that I teach computers to do neat things and give us information when we ask them for it by typing or clicking the mouse.... Our children don't care about CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, objective-C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, C#, or if we built our app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or whatever,
they care if they can learn from and enjoy whatever it is we built.
So a fresh perspective of "how can this actually benefit someone" has been bouncing in my head lately. I'm not saying one shouldn't try new cool tech... Still create experiments and things that push development forward, but perhaps a deeper look at what is truly needed should be a priority.
I was then reminded of an interview question I once had where I was asked: "How would you describe a database to your grandmother?" These sorts of questions may seem silly to some developers, but I find them to be a great exercise. These questions help us to target and focus on what it is we really do, and how our end users or clients might perceive what someone in the software profession might be thinking. So I thought of the answer provided in that interview where I made the analogy of a jewelry box that helps to organize and sort jewelry for efficient placement and retrieval.
How does a jewelry box translate to pre kindergarten children? Well I tried to avoid an abstract analogy and simplified it by stating that I teach computers to do neat things and give us information when we ask them for it by typing or clicking the mouse.... Our children don't care about CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, objective-C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, C#, or if we built our app for Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 or whatever,
they care if they can learn from and enjoy whatever it is we built.
So a fresh perspective of "how can this actually benefit someone" has been bouncing in my head lately. I'm not saying one shouldn't try new cool tech... Still create experiments and things that push development forward, but perhaps a deeper look at what is truly needed should be a priority.
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