Random Musings

a.k.a. Miscellaneous, not pertaining to development or architecture

Blue Screen Haiku

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

Ed note: This was posted on my old site in 2004. Every time you think we are making progress in computing, read this 🙂

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages:

Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
————————-
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
————————–
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
—————————–
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
——————————
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
——————————–
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
———————————
First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen dies
So beautifully.
———————————
With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.
——————————–
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao-until
You bring fresh toner.
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
———————————
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
———————————
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
———————————
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
———————————
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
——————————–
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
———————————
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

If you found this interesting, please share.

© Scott S. Nelson

Finally: An Answer To What I do

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

The most dreaded question for an IT professional is “What do you do”?

I’ve finally found the answer. I solve problems.

What kind problems? All kinds. The key piece is, my efficiency in solving a problem is directly proportional to how interesting I find the problem. It’s true for all IT pros.

For an MIS guy, it’s fascinating to find the best way to get file A to point B while keeping away hacker C.

For a Web Services guru, it’s all about getting data from one place to another, and the further apart they are, the more interesting it is.

I have a lot of problems I find interesting, but the one I find most interesting is how to get user A to use system B and for system B to do something useful with system C while user A has no idea that there is a system C. It just happens.

That is what I do.

If you found this interesting, please share.

© Scott S. Nelson

Software Project Failure

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

I’m on a roll with the LinkedIn rants today 🙂

Do software development efforts fail because: 1) the technical staff is not skilled enough for the work, 2) management has unrealistic expectations, 3) lack of reasonable resources to perform the effort. I would be interested to know your thoughts.

Someone once said that failure can only occur when time and resources are limiting factors. In the case of software, all of the above are true, though the most consistent cause I see is that the process of doing the following in order:
1) Set a completion date
2) Define the requirements
3) Design the software
4) Develop the software
5) Change the requirements
6) Wonder what went wrong

Agile is a good step in preventing failure from the above process except that even shops that use Agile often face that the end date is set before work begins and that unrealistic expectations are set at the same time.

Another ongoing issue is that management’s reaction to bad news about meeting functionality or a date is to throw more people on the project and demand more frequent meetings which pull the people most capable of solving the issue away from solving the issue. This trains developers to not communicate issues until the last minute, which accelerates this vicious cycle.

As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”

If you found this interesting, please share.

© Scott S. Nelson

Whatever Happened to the Promise of Java Beans?

Scott S NelsonLeave a comment

I ran across a question on LinkedIn today and gave a long-winded rant-like response that I thought I would post here, too.

Javabeans are hailed as reusabel software components. Is anybody aware of a market for these wigits?

My Answer: Yes, and it has been dominated by IBM and Oracle for the past decade. When the books were written that proposed business models around the technology the expectation was that Swing would win massive acceptance and that Applets would continue to be the key technology of rich web applications. None of this came to pass.

There was also the expectation of an open market of beans, which missed the fact that most developers would rather write their own and only reuse when directed, or until it becomes a habit from being directed to do so. The reuse is still mostly of internally developed beans or those that are part of vendor applications.

And the vendor applications mostly make the beans proprietary, i.e., they only run within their servers.

The exceptions to my cynical gut-reaction is the FOSS community, where many Java Beans and other reusable components can be found.

As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”

If you found this interesting, please share.

© Scott S. Nelson