Blue Violin

Don’t confuse a university education with vocational training

I graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in Computer Science in ye olde glory days of the mid-90’s. Recently the Computer Science department sent an email to alumni asking them to describe how their education has helped them in their careers. Fair enough, happy to help. This being the Internet, where nobody knows you’re a dog, one of my fellow alumnus decided to fire off a response attacking the department for not properly preparing graduates because… well, he thought he was getting vocational training.

Note: I refer to “author” not as yours truly but the person who wrote the below email in italics and bold.

With all due respect, this "survey" feels like a complete joke and
hardly gives me any confidence in the  U of I C.S. program.  How do
you expect a couple questions like that to really affect anything?

As you can see, our anonymous author starts by offering his hand in the spirit of assistance and friendship.

The software world is going Agile and Lean.  How much of that are you
teaching to students yet?  If you really want to be a leading edge CS
department, you've got to be teaching people how to write good solid
clean code.  Is test driven development anywhere in the curriculum?

I fundamentally disagree that “you've got to be teaching people how to write good solid clean code". While that’s certainly important, the goal of a Computer Science education is to give you a good foundation on the theories and practices of Computer Science. Not to teach you the latest fad to pop-up in startupland. Not to teach you “test-driven” development. Not to train students to be coding monkeys. Theory. Fundamentals. Got it?

When I graduated, I was sent into the world woefully under-prepared by
the university.  I pretty much taught myself how to really write code
and on my senior project, I was the only person on the team that could
really even write any code - I ended up writing all the code for the
rest of the team - and they all got the same grade for the project
that they could not even write the code for.

Basically our illustrious author is saying he wasn’t a good student, didn’t give a shit, and would’ve been better off working at a llama farm. If you don’t take advantage of the educational opportunities when you’re in school, it’s your own damn fault - you only get out what you put in and professors really don’t care about students who aren’t interested. I don’t why it’s so hard for students to ask for help but I saw it all the time when I was in school, fumbling around in the dark because they wouldn’t ask where the light switch is located. The author goes on to state he’s God’s gift to programming and but for him, the senior project would’ve died a miserable death. Guess he’s so damn smart he couldn’t help anybody else. Jackass.

Since then, I've hired a lot of software developers and run my own
company for 15 years.  Some of the best software developers I've hired
had *NO* college education.  I'm not the only one that's had that
experience.  It's making us software professionals question, more and
more, the value of a college degree in this profession.  Especially in
this economy.  I cannot in good conscious recommend to a talented
youth that they spend 4 yrs at the U of I before they enter the
profession.  In fact, spending 4 years at the university might just
set you back 4 or more years modern development paradigms

As we continue our journey, the author states he’s succeeded in spite of his education and feels that getting a degree is “wasting” valuable time because you don’t learn bleeding-edge technologies.. The problem with modern development practices is they change so rapidly. I don’t even pay attention to the newest language, development process, framework, etc. unless I have a good reason to use it. Turns out thinking for yourself is pretty useful. Teaching students the latest fad is a disservice because chances are by the time they graduate, another bright shiny object is born which the lemmings soon adopt. If you’re taught basic fundamentals and theory, you have the tools to see through this chicanery. This poor fellow didn’t and is rather proud of his ignorance.

Now, you may be surprised that I don’t think a Computer Science degree is necessary to be a good programmer. Programming is rare amongst engineering disciplines in that a person can learn most of the trade by doing. It’s hard for a person interested in civil engineering to learn by building bridges or roads.

If you want to be a computer scientist, whether academic or professional, theory matters. A lot. I use the theoretical knowledge I gained every day. Technical writing, algorithmic analysis, data structures, computational theory, language theory, hardware design – all of this is critical. Was it obvious how useful this knowledge was going to be when I was taking the classes? No, but that’s the beauty of a university education – it gives you the skills necessary for you to continue your education. To do so, asking the right question is far more important than regurgitating an answer. That’s what the author, the ignorant bastard, fails to understand. All of the “modern development paradigms” I learned in school are dead or irrelevant nowadays but knowledge thrives because critical thinking is the gift that keeps on giving.

As an aside, I wish more students knew C. Memory management and pointer manipulation are skills that transcend languages and platforms. All too often I see programmers unable to understand what’s causing problems because they have too much reliance on the virtual runtime and lack the intellect to ask the right questions. Garbage collection is great until it gets to the point it isn’t and starts causing you massive headaches. High-performance computing requires a very detailed understanding of both software and hardware; it’s difficult when all you know are the characteristics and capabilities of the virtual runtime.

The U of I is in a position to make a difference, if you *REALLY* want
to make a difference and not just appease the same old system of
tenure and outdated instructors.  The question is *WILL* you?

Ever notice your parents get smarter as you get older? As I look back, those tenured and outdated instructors (otherwise known as professors, a title that used to command a high amount of respect) were pretty damn smart, even brilliant.  The author, a man amongst boys, creates his straw man, a common debate tactic used by numbskulls “to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.” If you can’t or won’t answer the question, twist the question so it’s unrecognizable and plays to your position so you can safely protect your dogma.

I'd be interested to help you all in an advisory role if you really
want to change.  I'd even be interested in moving back to Idaho if I
though I could make a difference.  I graduated in 1986 and I'm at the
forefront of the Agile/Lean software movement.  If you are just going
to keep on doing the same old government funded, barely sufficient
program that I experienced 20 years ago, I guess I'll keep on
dismissing the message (and I'm not the only alumni, I'm sure).

Ah Idaho, with your untamed wilderness, beautiful scenery, high mountain prairies, sparkling rivers and lakes – I miss you. Our author, who is so endeared with himself that only he can save students from a future of drudgery and misery, knocks down his straw man and offers to help in the same fashion as your friendly, neighborhood loan shark. He’s at the forefront of the agile/lean software movement (whatever that means) for Pluto’s sake! We should beg him to lead us! We’re saved! I’m guessing he’s somehow in cahoots with the zealots at 37signals.

In summary, do you need a college degree to be involved in the wonderful world of software development? No. College isn’t for everybody and that’s not a slam. It’s the fact that we need better vocational training in our secondary schools. We need to get away from everybody being shoe-horned in to college prep coursework in high school. Students need honest choices.

If you recognize the richness inherent in a liberal education, which the author in his omnipotence doesn’t, then you’ll learn far more than you ever knew to ask.

How do I join the startup community in Atlanta?

Last week I had a discussion with Wayt King over Twitter about startups and networking that culminated in this question from Wayt:

“ prob is there are so many events and meetups - how is the startup newbie gonna know which are a WOMFT? “

First, Wayt’s question is an indication of how much Atlanta’s startup community has grown. 4 years ago there was an email list announcing where the next entrepreneur happy hour was and Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs. It was easy to decide which event to attend – you went to both.

I felt this question deserved more than a 140-character response because, to me at least, the root question is:

“How do I join the startup community in Atlanta?”

There are a couple of ground rules you need to be aware of:

• Be sincere
• Don’t be an asshole
• Be willing to help others
• You get out what you put in

Part of sincerity is continuing to make progress with your startup; don’t be the “big hat, no cattle” person.

Twitter has the pulse of startups in Atlanta and it’s the easiest way to find out about events, what people are doing, and the ferociousness of Georgia Tech students/alumni when it comes to football. Who I follow is a good place to start but it’s by no means complete.

To specifically answer Wayt’s question, here are some events I think are pretty good:

• StartupLounge Atlanta – a great place to meet fellow entrepreneurs and investors
• Michael Blake’s Office Hours – would be remiss if I didn’t plug my partner-in-crime
• Open Coffee – open discussion amongst entrepreneurs; details are broadcast on Twitter by Sanjay Parekh (@sanjay)
• Waffle Wednesday – kudos to Gordon Rogers and the Atlanta Technology Angels for providing help to entrepreneurs
• Atlanta StartupDrinks – exactly what it sounds like
• Atlanta Startup Weekend – slap together a startup in a weekend with a bunch of other crazy people
• TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs Society – a bit too early for me (starts at 7:30am) and really depends on the speaker but they have a great entrepreneurs-only roundtable following the event
• StartupRiot – held once a year, you get 3 minutes to pitch your startup in front of ~400 entrepreneurs and investors; great networking event
• StartupChicks – organization for female entrepreneurs; meetings held at least once a month

You can find others on Twitter and searching the web. I try to get to 1 – 2 events a month to catch up on what’s going on but there are times when I’m not able to make any of them due to crunch time, family, etc. I’d suggest you try them as your schedule permits, see what works for you, and try other events you think are interesting - just remember there’s a startup (i.e. yours) that needs lovin’ so don’t go overboard.

There are a lot of good blogs you can read. In no particular order:

• Lance Weatherby
• Sanjay Parekh
• Atlanta Technology Angels
• Greg Foster
• TechDrawl – Atlanta’s TechCrunch
• PeachSeedz – ATDC blog
• Stephen Fleming
• Scott Burkett
• Michael Blake
• David Cummings

The discussions on Lance Weatherby’s blog and  TechDrawl are particularly active.

I hope this helps. What advice do you have for those joining the startup community?

How I learned to stop worrying and love the #fail

Most of you have probably seen “Apollo 13” and/or heard one of the best lines from the movie.

I know you’ve heard it because it entered our vernacular exactly 5 minutes after the film was released. Managers love it. Politicians love it. Hell, even pastors love it. It projects leadership and determination. Through sheer willpower and brilliance, no quarter will be given. Obstacles will be overcome in a perfect manner. At the end we’ll all sit around the campfire singing “kumbaya”. This is good right?

What a crock of shit. Can we banish this cliche? I’m so tired of hearing it as a substitute for real leadership.

Here’s the dirty truth - failure is always an option and often it’s inevitable.

If you’re doing anything innovative, at some point you’re going to fail – it’s that simple. A good indicator of how successful you and your startup is going to be is how you handle such failure. Do you learn from your mistakes and move on? Do you start playing the blame game and its assorted defensive maneuvers? Do you prefer a scorched earth policy creating wreckage and carnage in your path while you inflict your revenge on the guilty and innocent alike? Do you coo “that’s OK” while the same failure keeps happening again and again and again?

In software development and entrepreneurship, you’ll have many paths to take, none of which are clear before you take the first step. You don’t know what you don’t know. As such, failing means you learned what didn’t work. Don’t underestimate knowing what didn’t work. As long as you’re getting closer to your goal, you haven’t failed; rather, you took a detour.  Did you make the the best decision you could with the incomplete information you had at the time? If so, how is that failure? Get up, dust yourself off, and get going again. Self-pity is dangerous because it leads to inaction and that’s the real failure.

Experience is just another name for your collective failures. If I listed all of my failures throughout my career, you’d have big failures, small failures, and a lot in between. I wince at some of them and smile at others. One of my biggest failures with Blue Violin was thinking I could do everything myself and not recruiting a complete team. It still hurts. However, what I learned from Blue Violin (mistakes and all) is being put to use at the startup I’m currently with where I get to make a whole bunch of brand new mistakes. See how this works?

Failure is a by-product of taking risks and taking action. I have no tolerance for those in the peanut gallery who take potshots at those who have failed while themselves doing nothing. Hindsight is always 20/20 while foresight is like driving in a heavy fog with severe astigmatism. If you’re so damn omnipotent, get off your ass and attempt to accomplish something or shut the hell up. If I wanted to listen to whining, I’d watch Fox News.

Just so we’re clear, incompetence, greediness, laziness, arrogance et. al. must be dealt with swiftly and with a heavy hand. Failure with the aforementioned root causes isn’t something you should tolerate of yourself and others. In startups, they’re deadly.

If you keep making the same mistakes ad infinitum, you’re just stubborn. Here’s a quarter – go buy a clue.

Go out and fail because it’s the only way you’ll ever succeed.

Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur?

Jen Bonnet asked the following question on her blog:

Entrepreneur magazine has been running an interesting campaign on Twitter, Facebook and their site.  The question is...

Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur?  AND what is the difference?

Self-employed vs. Risk Taker

9-to-5 versus 24/7

Here's some of the answers people have posted:

• An entrepreneur is a creator and an innovator. A small-business owner may or may not be.
• A small-business owner eats crab legs. Entrepreneur eats ramen noodles.
• I am a small-business owne, not an entrepreneur.  I want to be my own boss, do something I enjoy, make a good living and enjoy life. I do not want to take big risks in the hopes of making millions or headlines.
• A small-business owner has already determined his potential: small.  An entrepreneur has already determined the world is his oyster.
• As an entrepreneur, I feel that we bite off huge tasks and then figure out how to chew it.

How do you define entrepreneur versus small business owner?  Which are you?

Here’s my 2 cents:

I'd say the key difference is tolerance to uncertainty. For iterative entrepreneurs (my term for "small business owner" - both groups are entrepreneurs), the business model is defined and the problems are well understood. Business capital is often easier to get because there's usually physical assets to back a loan and banks understand the risk involved. Uncertainty is manageable.

For innovative entrepreneurs, the business model is constantly changing, the problems aren't even known, capital is difficult to get because (amongst others) the value of the enterprise is in the intellectual property, and any attempt at modeling risk is a fool's errand. Following the fable of the dutch boy and the dam, plugging one area of uncertainty allows another area of uncertainty to spring open. You can't contain it, nor should you - uncertainty leads to serendipitous outcomes and the goal is to maximize your exposure to positive serendipity and reduce exposure to negative serendipity.

"I want to be my own boss, do something I enjoy, make a good living and enjoy life. I do not want to take big risks in the hopes of making millions or headlines."

Basically this person is saying “I want be king.” Who doesn't? However, you're in for a rude shock because you're not your own boss - your customers are your boss. You may make a good living (whatever that is - each one of us defines that differently) but that won't initially be the case and guess what, you're eating ramen noodles like the rest of us.

This comment also points a big difference between the two camps. As an innovative entrepreneur myself, I love what I do and thus enjoy my life - it's only work if you'd rather be doing something else (much to my wife's chagrin.) If enjoying life means working the least amount possible, you've set yourself up for failure from the start.

"9-to-5 versus 24/7"

Seriously? Any entrepreneurial effort requires every bit of effort you can muster. If you're not willing to commit to that, don't bother. Seriously, don't waste the effort.

7/4/1776 - ToDo List: 1) Start a Country 2) Find Funding

232 years ago today, a bunch of guys in Philadelphia made one of the riskiest decisions of any startup in history. Thumbing their noses at the world's dominant power, these guys said "There has to be something better"; upon signing the Declaration of Independence their very lives were at stake and many paid a deep personal price in the years to come. Today is a celebration of the Founders of this country and the gift of liberty they gave a then struggling group of colonies.

Today with oil at $144/barrel, the housing market in utter disarray, the dollar getting pounded on the exchange markets, a sluggish economy, a war against terrorism, and a presidential election in which both candidates seem more concerned with how much money the Federal government can spend and regulations it can impose instead of protecting the liberties of Americans, America is going through a rough patch. To some, it appears our best days are behind us.

Don't count me in that group.

We've been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

From a commentary by Gordon Sinclair that aired June 5, 1973 on CFRB in Toronto, Ontario Canada :

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The  Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.

 

Have a happy 4th of July.

PitchCamp

Live blogging from StartupLounge's PitchCamp.

Going around the table with introductions and initial pitches.A lot of interesting ideas that people are pursuing.

"Drink your own Kool-Aid. Learning Should Never Stop. The day you think you know it all, you're done. Embrace change and other viewpoints" - Scott

Part 1: The Pitch

One-line pitch - answers 4 key questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• What pain do you solve?
• And for whom? (what customer?)

i.e. "Acme Software provides a web-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system aimed at middle market companies that cannot afford the expensive products offered by current vendors in the market."

Conversational Pitch:

• Intro
• Describe
• Hook
• Close

Skilled workers, where art thou?

I read this story today in which AT&T's CEO says that "We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs" referring to filling 5,000 customer service positions that AT&T is moving from India to the U.S.

I think what he really meant to say is that he's having trouble finding people with the required skills who are willing to take the salary he's offering.

How I Picked Blue Violin

Servinity, a local company, posted on its blog how it picked its name and logo. I thought I'd share how I picked Blue Violin because it's a question I get asked occasionally and because the process I went through was so much different than Servinity's.

I started work on Ratchet, the product's original name, in 2005 and originally intended to create a desktop application. I didn't like the look-and-feel of Visual Basic controls so I started to create a mock-up in HTML of how I wanted the product to look. During that process, I figured out that I could deliver Ratchet through the web and voila! Automated testing delivered through the browser.

A couple of months after that, I wasn't happy with the name Ratchet and felt a different, better name was needed. I tried a couple of different names like QAWebTest but honestly, generic names like that suck. I remembered reading a story that said consumers can't distinguish any fast-food restaurants that include the name Taco and felt that applied to boring names like QAWebTest.

Being out of ideas and at a Mexican standoff with myself, I went to iStockphoto and started looking at pictures to get the creative juices flowing. That's when I found the following picture:

The rest, as they say, is history.

Let There Be Light

Tonight I released the full source code to Blue Violin under the GNU Affero General Public License. You can get the code at http://code.google.com/p/blueviolin/ . I chose the Affero General Public license because it allows users who interact with the licensed software over a network to receive the source for that program. 

For those who aren't familiar with Blue Violin, it's an automated testing tool for websites that's delivered through your browser; currently, it only works in Internet Explorer. My hope is that I'm offering something useful to the community that allows any organization to take advantage of automated testing and website monitoring. I truly believe that the core technology behind Blue Violin, called Ratchet, is very good and on par with some commercial offerings. However, the documentation sucks. Although the source code has been released there aren't any instructions on how to compile the code or create an environment to run it in. The documentation will be online within a couple of weeks at www.blueviolin.org but if you have any questions on how to get started, feel free to email me at [email protected] or call me at 770-715-1334.

 

 

 

David Heinemeier Hansson is an idiot

I read this blog post [via Jeff Atwood's excellent Coding Horror blog]:

"While I can certainly understand the reasons why some people go with Linux, I have run all but dry of understanding for programmers that willfully pick Windows as their platform of choice. I know a few that are still stuck in the rut for various reasons — none of them desire.

I would have a hard time imagining hiring a programmer who was still on Windows for 37signals. If you don't care enough about your tools to get the best, your burden of proof just got a lot heavier.

So if you haven't switched already, stop procrastinating. Get it over with. If you have any desire working for the rising rank of companies building their business on open source technologies, you don't want to carry a liability like that around on you resume. Being labeled a 2005 Switcher is bad enough."

Obviously, those of us writing software on a Windows computer are knuckle-dragging cavemen. The biggest fallacy of his argument is that the choice of your operating system classifies you as either a l33t hax0r or a woeful Windoze luzer; this is just a different twist on the classic religious wars such as vi vs. emacs. Besides, I thought the whole point of creating web applications was to free the customer from the desktop and provide rich features regardless of the operating system being used. Oh wait, only if you're using OS X. And Ruby on Rails. And if your first name is David; the rest of you can suck it.

There are good programmers and bad programmers and the choice of operating system or language won't magically move you from one group to the other. A bad programmer using OS X and Ruby is still a bad programmer. I would have a hard time hiring a programmer who was so stricken with his choice of technology that he was blind to the benefits of other choices. If you have a desire to work for a company where technical decisions lead to unwavering zealotry, then 37signals sounds like a great place to work.

Personally, I like Windows because I'm comfortable with it, warts and all. And I like open source software such as emacs, PHP, MySQL, Firefox, and Appcelerator. In fact, I like open source software so much that I'm in the process of releasing Blue Violin as open source software. I do so because I do care about using the best tools.

In a follow-up post, he elaborates further:

"On the other hand, if you want to work with open source technologies like the Rails stack of Apache/lighttpd, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Ruby/Rails, etc, I find a strong disconnect with doing so from Windows. It's just not a natural fit neither from a technological, cultural, or political perspective. Actively pursuing or celebrating this unnatural fit raises a red flag for me."

All of the products he mentions run fine on a Windows computer. Here I am just trying to get my work done only to find out that I'm a technological Frankenstein and scare away small children.

And he continues:

"As such, I'm a bit surprised by the apparent controversial nature of the original posting. Sure, it was worded with enough sting to likely cause a reaction. But that 37signals, and companies in general, base hiring decisions on a sound technical/cultural/political fit surprise me to come as a surprise. "

Oh, be still my beating heart; feigning surprise is at the best naïve.

Think for yourself and choose the best operating system, language, framework, chocolate milk, candy bar, or paint color that's going to give you and your product the best chance for success. When people ask me "what programming language should we use on this project" I ask them what language they know the best and immediately recommend that language. Any technical choice you make has its benefits and problems and your job is to make sure you understand both; you should always be able to argue both sides of a technical decision or you really don't understand the choice you make.

Lastly, your customers – they don't care. They just want stuff to work.