Value of business

Business is about creating value.

“Value” is here… um… pretty anything that is of value:  products, services, capital, information, emotions, health, security (taking over risks) or things leading to value (like software features or legal regulations). When value is created, it can be sold to customers in exchange to other kinds of value.

Normally, you have to invest some existing value to create new value. But sometimes, it is not the case. Especially in software development, you can often see how a new value is created as a by-product, or even because of NOT doing something.

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Lost in translation

On his way to seniority, every junior software developer has to deal with commenting source code. Usually, it starts with following a recommendation from his favorite programming book. The novice developer is so exited that a program he has written himself, with his own fingertips, compiles, runs and breathes that he is eager to follow any advice from his book, even without clear understanding of reasons and consequences of his doing. So, comments like

i++; //increment i

arise.

Continue reading “Lost in translation”

This Week in Twitter

  • Looking at picture of 5 different tonal levels in Cantonese. Good: they use only 9 tones of 25 mathematically possible. Bad: I can’t sing. #
  • Now I know why Mandarin is recommended for beginners. There, they have only two levels and 4 tones. How easy is that… #
  • hr sendete gerade faszinierende Eröffnungsshow der Internationalen Turnfest in FFM. Ich liebe Feuerwerke! #
  • The word for technology ?? has a common part with the word wushu ??, and it means “skill”. #
  • Thanks for following, “Jobs in Hong Kong”, but I don’t plan to move to HK at the moment :) In the future may be, you never know… #
  • Tried on Dostoyevski to German (usable) and English (amazingly good). @ckluis Check out this translator… http://www.nicetranslator.com/ #
  • On my way to the office, I’ve found a pin of this kind http://is.gd/M5jN, sitting in the front tire. The tire is OK. #kevlar #schwalbe #
  • Entity Framework visual designer isn’t usable with views, it assigns random fields to be PKs. Editing XML mapping file works though. #
  • fridental. Jetzt auch in steereo: http://www.steereo.de/#User/fridental #
  • Also ich bin tierlieb und so, aber DAS hier… http://yfrog.com/5fwwjxj #
  • Ts, ts, ts. Im Hinterhof leben zwei Elster, ein Amsel und ein Paar Blaumeisen. Aber die Mücken wachsen trotzdem 2cm groß. #
  • Trying out the new IIS SEO Toolkit beta http://is.gd/NZ2c #
  • Just spent another 4 hours only to find this WCF bug http://is.gd/Pd15 You’d never come to idea it is a framework bug when you have it. #

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This Week in Twitter

  • Running around and drinking liters of milk. Have eaten a small Habanero Chili. With stem and seeds. #
  • Fresh Habaneros taste strange and juicy… in the first two seconds, before the PAIN comes. #
  • @bobuk ?????????. ????????? ?????????? ?????? ???? ? ??????? ??????????. 44 ????? ?????? ?? ??????. ? ????? ?????? ?? ???????? in reply to bobuk #
  • @janapur Yep. Allerdings gibt’s bei mir auch welche, die absitzen mussten. Einer wurde gar vergewaltigt und getötet. Früher != besser :) in reply to janapur #
  • Any ideas what to do with the remaining 10 Habaneros in my fridge? #
  • RT @HolgerSchmidt: The future of #Twitter: Project management? http://cli.gs/MJEWJM (via @Twitter_Tips) #
  • I like to write ? and ?, they have a smooth flying feeling. ? and ? are the opposite – you have to be patient to write them correctly :) #
  • @Boston_Police is awesome: http://bit.ly/ZbPHn via: @rands #
  • Russian labor law: working day duration has to be reduced by roughly 2h for each centigrade above 28 in the office (?????? 2.2.4.54896) #
  • Looked at Adobe AfterEffects for the first time. Now I know where this sudden love to black in Expression products comes from. #
  • @bobuk ????????… ? ???? ???? ???, ? ?? ?????. in reply to bobuk #
  • @Damir Hey, not “soon” please. I’d prefer to arrive at home dry. in reply to Damir #
  • Trying to analyse just two seconds from a yesterday’s smalltalk and unable to come to a definite conclusion. It makes me feel like a fool. #
  • I have people skills http://is.gd/GC5x #
  • You have to say “Undo check out” instead of “Undo pending changes” to appear old and expert-ish. #
  • Preparing myself mentally to the next two long weeks. #
  • Wow, I didn’t know it is allowed to do HTTPS requests from a HTTP xap, but it is, since Silverlight 2 RTW. http://is.gd/J8Fm #

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I have a dream…

Today is the Saturday, the day where everybody in Germany goes shopping for the next week.

In my family, we use to buy things either in a discounter, which has a small assortment, various and unstable levels of quality, but low prices; or in a huge store with a great assortment, stable quality, but also somewhat higher level of prices.

When we go shopping, we aim to spend as little money and as little time as possible. Besides that, we want to shorten our ways to save expensive fuel and also do something against the climate warming. These are our business goals. Now, how exactly are we going to drive?

Continue reading “I have a dream…”

This Week in Twitter

  • ?????????? Wi-Fi ? ????????? – ??? ???? ???????. ? ??????? ??? ???? ???????? ???. #??????? #
  • Cool. Mein ICE aus München hatte 80 Minuten Verspätung. Ich werd jetzt mit ganzen 10 Euro entschädigt. #
  • They say there is a neglible difference in software quality of distributed vs. colocated teams: http://bit.ly/Dn9NR #
  • RT @rands Last Day Dream: http://bit.ly/dJVaj. I bet everybody will want to watch it twice. #
  • Participated in yet another lose/lose negotiation. #
  • What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0 Beta 1 http://is.gd/nTlB #
  • ?????????: http://tinyurl.com/omg28w #
  • It is over 20 centigrades at day to fuel the sun, and around 13 centigrades at night, to breath the air. #best-weather-ever #
  • Don’t understand people sitting in the same office but using IM to chat. #
  • A document-oriented process will never lead to a successful web project. Unless it is about HTML documents. #
  • Wow, Windows Vista Media Center unterstützt jetzt Silverlight, zumindest für Netflix (http://is.gd/BH75) #
  • Serviced my bike chain yesterday, with my hands dirty up to elbows. We need bike chains based on force fields ASAP #need-future-now #

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This Week in Twitter

  • I’m in Estonia this week. #
  • ?? ????? ????? ????? ? ???????? ???? ?? ????? #??????? #
  • Sky plus FM ?? ??????? ????? ???????????? ????? #??????? #
  • ??????????? ??????? ?????, ??? ? ?????: ???? ?????????? ?????? :). ?? ?????? 3.5, 2.5 ??? 0.05%, ? 1.5% ??? #??????? #
  • Looking at ? in ? and wondering what cultural consequences it has. It’s like “red” and “beauty” sharing the same root in russian. #
  • ??? ??? ?????? ?. Salomon ?? ??? ?? ??????????? ??????? Rademar. ????? ?? ????? ?? ? ???. Sportscheck ?? ??????????. #??????? #
  • Are helpful and useful formal organization structures? #
  • @weiss_heiko Your post violates coding style (use descriptive names for variables) :) in reply to weiss_heiko #
  • @weiss_heiko Yeah, I’m still in Tartu. It seems to be optimal place to work for customers in Bucharest, Hamburg and Munich :) in reply to weiss_heiko #
  • An interesting experiment, feasible only in todays singularity times: http://www.yooouuutuuube.com (via @rands) #
  • It seems to me other people can hold experiments taking several months long. I can’t, I need an immediate feedback. #
  • @weiss_heiko oooh, come on, Estonia is not THAT far to the north :) in reply to weiss_heiko #
  • Force me to fill a useless document once, and I will not trust you anymore. Life’s to short for that. #
  • If you want my feedback, convince me that you can and will do something reasonable with it. #
  • Turnable chair arm rests are ingenious. #
  • Software industry crisis is proportional to the number of competing data query and processing languages (SQL, XSLT, Linq,…) #
  • SL RenderTransform gotcha: ScaleTransform will also scale the distance of TranslateTransform, when applied afterwards. #
  • Wolframalpha – too fantastic to be real http://tinyurl.com/q735x7 (via @umputun) #
  • Software product is the point where business idea touches technology. #
  • Preparing to leave Tartu for Tallinn. #
  • Wi-Fi ? ??????? ? ???????? ? ??????? ???????? ???????? – ??? ???-???? ????????? ??????? #??????? #

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This Week in Twitter

  • Pedaling 30 km per set is my max. limit. In reality, I don’t sustain it longer than a couple of days, so it’s 26 km on avg. #
  • @JustinAngel Thanks, here is a simple XAML reproducing the problem: http://is.gd/wxsR in reply to JustinAngel #
  • Not everybody is ready to help, but everybody wants to be in loop so they can make the decisions. #
  • How to extract a Silverlight Toolkit compatible theme from existing SL control: http://is.gd/wAZq #
  • Thing to try next time I fly United or Virgin http://www.gogoinflight.com/ #
  • @kangamono Does Moonlight 2 preview support PlayReady? :) #
  • RT @inafried: In his email on latest cuts, Ballmer leaves door open to further cuts. http://bit.ly/zz9eF #
  • @followfinder 7d707 #
  • Beautiful viral loop implementation: @followfinder. I wonder what is the CTR from twitter.com/followfinder to followfinder.org #
  • @mtnygard This is why piracy is so popular. I wonder what essential legal regulations force studios to geo-block. in reply to mtnygard #
  • It is always fascinating to see when some people try to mitigate risks that cannot be mitigated and are just part of being alive. #
  • FontSize=9 looks much worse in SL2 than FontSize=10 or 8. I wonder why, because font sizes are in pixels anyway… #
  • Main advantage of OSS is that you remain anonymous using it. With proprietary soft, even if its free, you have to talk to its authors. #
  • @jasjau Ich mag http://tinyurl.com/cubjv8. Kann ich im DeepZoom irgendwie Deeplinks für Einzelbilder bekommen? in reply to jasjau #
  • “Komme nie mit einer Idee” http://www.sueddeutsche.de/jobkarriere/864/420627/text/ #
  • @umputun ? ?? ????????, ??? ?????? ??? ???-?? ????????, ?????? ??-????????????????? ????????? ?? ??????????? ????? ?????… in reply to umputun #

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On Quality

“Scope, Time, Price and Quality. Pick any three of those.” You can often hear this principle and see how it is used in real life. More often that not quality is the parameter that is being sacrificed by project stakeholders. And this is really, really shocking. I’ll explain in a minute why, but let me first introduce the quality metric.

Software quality is a percent, from 0 to 100.

Continue reading “On Quality”

This Week in Twitter

  • ??? ???? ????? ??????????????: http://linorg.ru/pts/pts75.html #
  • Some ideas tweaking W7 UI a little bit: http://vimeo.com/4255076 #
  • An inspirational content editing UI: http://prezi.com This is how a modern RIA CMS should look like. #
  • I never knew HTTP protocol is still evolving. Must hear for every web dev http://www.infoq.com/presentations/mnot-http-status-1108 #
  • Thought-provoking teamwork wisdom by @ChristopherAver http://bit.ly/1adtUP. Enjoy it in small chunks and google up the references. #
  • Resharper cuts //-comments placed for a field definition when cleaning up code. Use ///-comments instead, they stick with the field. #
  • Developing software with love is more fun. Duh! #
  • Upgraded Fiddler to ver 2.2.2.0 and, as always, surprised by the amount of cool and extremely useful new features. #
  • I can’t believe I’m doing this… http://tinyurl.com/c6pt3g #
  • Are you going to use the new personalization feature of Google search (don’t know its proper name yet) and if yes, why? #
  • Already discovered new cool Vista Resource Monitor and even cooler W7 Resource Monitor? It can be started from Task Manager. #
  • It isn’t flu. It isn’t flu. It’s a cold I have. Just a cold. I haven’t been in Mexico, so why should it be a flu? No, it’s surely a cold… #
  • Is it asocial when I’m coming into the office with a cold? #
  • Making money is not easy. But it doesn’t mean any working business model has to be respected and/or copied. #
  • In Silverlight, setting TextBlock.Width won’t limit width of the text, if the TextBlock is in a Canvas. Crazy. #
  • @Damir Just checked and there is not a single movie produced in the last year that I would really want to watch. That makes me think :) #

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