I Am A Failed Consultant

I get great joy and personal satisfaction from assisting someone or a paying client with the IT challenges they face, specifically in software development. Some 20 years ago, I discovered this about myself, and realised that consulting and coaching was my calling in life and have dedicated myself to it. I have spent years, honing the skills to help mentor, coach and consult with my clients. The mantra of my service and the measure of my success is that I become replaceable. If I cannot be replaced then I have failed. 

So why do I think I have failed? Over the years as I look back at my clients requirements, I notice that most of them were looking for a technology that would solve their problems, but instead I sold them problem solving techniques to better understand their problem spaces. Oftentimes, upon analyzing the issues that a client is struggling with and trying to solve with technology, I find that the real issue is a lack of understanding of the problem space. Badly designed systems irrespective of the technology is usually the result of not understanding the problem space sufficiently. Changing the technology is not going to fix this, only resolving the problem space will. So what ensues is a new, badly designed system, with new technology. Yes, while the new technology may or may not ease the problem somewhat, it does not remove the underlying cause.  

I could easily sell my clients the latest fad like micro architectures, agile processes etc. and they will possibly eat it up, love me and I would feel really successful, and in a few months time I could sell them the next new fad again and so and so on. But for most IT departments the latest technologies is the least of their problems in my opinion, so instead I provide them with pragmatism and a reality check, which no one seems to want to hear….So I have failed, and end up trying to rescue these new technology projects.

Book Review: Domain Driven Design

Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author has distilled what most experienced object oriented designers typically do implicitly. The ideas are not new, but the author has created a ubiquitous language for describing the process more explicitly. It is well worth a read especially for aspiring architects.

View all my reviews

Deliverers vs Loyalists

How many times have you heard "We do agile" or "We do SOA" or something similar? There is nothing wrong in doing agile or SOA or whatever is in fashion at a particular time, it is just that we so often lose sight of the purpose of what we do as software developers.

The purpose of any software development project is working software and the technologies and processes are but just enablers and are secondary. They are useful in building and delivering software but are not ends in themselves.

Those focused on delivering quality software usually deliver successful software projects. They are the deliverers rather than the loyalists.

3 Things You Must Do for Successful Software Delivery

1. Accept that there is never just 3 things!
2. There is no recipe for successful delivery
3. There is no silver bullet!
4. Repeat the first 3 things to yourself perpetually 

My 2014 JavaOne

It has been fifteen years since I last attended JavaOne in San Francisco and I am quite excited. I spent 26 hours in an aeroplane to get to San francisco, I certainly have forgotten how torturous that is. Since fifteen years ago, Java has grown tremendously and the schedule shows it, there are 537 sessions with 572 speakers. Putting my schedule together was excruciatingly difficult, choosing what to miss out on. But with the help of many coin tosses I got to the following schedule:

Sunday 28 September

8:00 - 8:45 : Avatar.js
9:00 - 16:00 : Develop Java Embedded Applications Using a Raspberry Pi

Monday 29 September

:30 - 10:30 : Designing a Beautiful REST + JSON API
11:00 - 12:00 : Developing On-Device iOS and Android Apps with Java
12:30 - 13:30 : Introduction to Hotspot Internals
14:30 - 15:30 : Modular Architectures Using Microservices
16:00 - 17:00 : The Anatomy of a Secure Web Application Using Java
17:30 - 18:30 : Java Performance: Hardware, Structures, and Algorithms
19:00 - 19:45 : Real-World RESTful Service Development Problems and Solutions
20:00 - 20:45 : JAX-RS REST Services and Angular.js: Tools for an Even Better Experience
21:00 - 21:45 : Learning Scala: A Practical Approach

Tuesday 30 September

8:30 - 10:30 : Building Secure Applications with Java EE
11:00 - 12:00 : Creating elegant builds at scale with Gradle
12:30 - 13:30 : API Design Checklist
14:30 - 15:30 : Writing recommender system with Java
16:00 - 17:00 : Getting Started with MongoDB and Java
17:30 - 18:30 : Javascript across tiers with Nashorn And Avatar.js
19:00 - 19:45 : Making all client-side java secure
20:00 - 20:45 : Sumatra: The open JDK project
21:00 - 21:45 : Agent based cross platform middleware

Wednesday 01 October

 8:30 - 9:30 : Java EE 7 Batch Processing in the Real World
10:00 - 11:00 : Unorthodox Enteprise practices
11:30 - 12:30 : Microservices on the JVM: A Practical Overview
13:00 - 14:00 : JPA Gotchas and Best Practices: Lessons from Overstock.com
15:00 - 16:00 : Building Custom JavaFX Controls
16:30 - 15:30 : Applying Java's Cryptography

 Thursday 02 October

 9:00 - 10:45 : Java Community Keynote
11:30 - 12:30 : With GC solved what else makes a JVM pause
13:00 - 14:00 : IntelliJ IDEA
14:30 - 15:30 : Transforming code to Java 8
16:00 - 17:00 : Do-It-Yourself Usability Design for Developers

 I am exhausted, am off to bed now in preparation for my busy Sunday!!!!

JavaScript: Splicing an Array

This JavaScript blog series will be posted more regularly in 2014. To kick off, lets look at how to dynamically add and remove items anywhere in an array. Arrays in JavaScript have a splice function to do just that.

It has the following syntax

array.splice(index, quantity, item1, ..., itemX)   returning an array

where the parameters are defined as:

index  :  it is required and specifies the position at which to add or remove items. If it is negative it will calculate from the end of the array.

quantity : it is optional and specifies the number of items to be removed from the index onwards. To not remove any items, set it to 0. If it is not specified it will remove all elements after the index.

itemX : it is optional and is the items to be added to the array at the specified index.

Lets define an array

var myArray = [1,2,3,4,5]

Now lets remove all elements from index 4 onwards

myArray.splice(4)

This results in the following array

[ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

Now let us add some elements to our array starting at index 4,

myArray.splice(4,0,5,6,7,8,9,10)

This results in the following array

[ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

Now lets replace elements with values 4 and 5 with 11 and 12

myArray.splice(3,2,11,12)     //remove 2 elements at index 3 and add 11 and 12 at index 3

This results in the following array

[ 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

Now lets remove elements with values 11 and 12 from the back of the array

myArray.splice(-7,2)

This results in the following array

[ 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

Pretty cool hey, that's enough on splicing, its time for you to experiment with it. Till next time enjoy!!!

2013; break; 2014;

Year 2013 delivered Edward Snowden to the world, who single handedly confirmed that we live in an Orwellian world. All technology corporations, both hardware and software corporations cannot be trusted protecting simple basic human rights. More terrifyingly, most people could not be bothered and choose willingly to live in the matrix. 

Year 2014 will be spent focused on looking for ways to protect my right to privacy. I have also resolved to blog at least once a week.

Happy New Year, may 2014 bring you safer technology and the restoration of basic freedoms......

JavaScript: Slicing an Array

Have you ever wanted just a sub section of an array? Well, with slicing an array you can do just that.

Suppose I have an array

var myArray = [1,2,3,4,5];

and I want the first 3 elements, I can do the following

myArray.slice(0,3);

which return an array with the first 3 elements

[ 1, 2, 3 ]

This does not modify the original array in any way, it just returns a new array

The function slice has the following signature,

slice ( beginIndex, endIndex ) where the index is zero based i.e. the first element in a an array starts at index 0.

You could also access the array from the end using negatives indices for example,

myArray.slice(-3, -1);

returns

[ 3, 4 ]

Next we will look at splice......until next time!

Software Patents

I have always hated the patent system and think that it is abused and inhibits innovation. One of my favourite writers, Joel Spolsky has written a great blog on killing patents.

JavaScript: Length of Arrays

JavaScript arrays are dynamic and flexible with a few gotcha's. Today we will have an in-depth look at the length property, which is an unsigned 32 bit integer that specifies the number of elements in an array. Arrays have 0 based indices, therefore the length property will be the highest index + 1. Lets have a look at some examples

var a = [];

a.length   //return 0, a is an empty array

var b = [2,4,6];

b.length   //return 3

b[3] = 8;

b.length   //returns 4

b['a'] = 5;   //never a good idea to use an array as an associative array, instead use a plain object

b.length   //returns 4, non numeric indices are ignored in the length property

b[10000] = 50;

b.length   //returns 10001, the positions between 3 and 10000 are padded with undefined

Setting the length of an array will shorten it as well

b.length = 4

b.length   //returns 4, shortened the array from 10001 to 4

The safest way to empty an array is to set the length to 0

b.length = 0;   //empty's an array

Next, I will be looking at the slice and splice functions on an array, till next time.......

JavaZone 2013: Javapocalypse

JavaScript: More on Arrays

So what else can you do with JavaScript Arrays? Arrays are like a swiss army knife, you can use it like an array, you can use it like an object, you can use it like a stack and like a collection, whatever suits your purposes. Arrays have the following functions available

• length - return the total number of elements in the array
• join - concatenates all the elements in the array into a single string separated by the parameter passed
• concat - concatenates an array to the array and returns a new array
• sort - sorts the array by character encoding by default or by a user defined function
• reverse - reverses the elements of the array
• slice - returns an array that is a subset of the original array
• splice - can insert, remove or replace one or more array elements
• push - adds an element to the end of an array
• pop - it removes and returns the last element of an array
• shift - it removes and returns the first element of the array shifting all other elements down
• unshift - inserts elements at the beginning of an array shifting all the other element up
• toString - converts all the elements to a string and concatenates them to a comma delimited string
• toLocaleString - converts all the elements to a localised string and concatenates them to a comma delimited string

Pretty flexible stuff, next we will look at examples of each of these functions

JavaScript: Arrays

The JavaScript array construct is very flexible, and I especially love the fact that you can put anything into a JavaScript array. There is no type police breaking your code. Arrays in JavaScript are not true arrays, but an Object with special array like functionality. So how do we define an Array

var x = new Array (1, 5, "ten", "twenty");

or

var y = [1, 'a', true, 7.5, new Object()];

or

var z = [ [1, "hello"], [2, {name:"test"}]];


Array indexes are zero based and can be accessed as follows

var value = x[0]  //value will be 1

var anotherValue = z[1][1]['name']  //anotherValue will be test

Array indexes are generally integers greater than or equal to 0 and less than 2³² - 1, anything else would be converted to a string and looked up as a string.

Arrays can also act as a dictionary with ease, using the x variable defined above, you could do the following

x['a'] = 12345

Yip the power of arrays in Javascript is terrifying, but liberating. I will look at some other array functionality in the next instalment