Category: Rant

Five easy ways to fail?

Ok, so I just read Five easy ways to fail, which itself is just a quote from his article on Inc. Magazine. While I usually find Joel’s stuff intelligent, even when I do not agree with it, and I actually agree with much of the article, the piece quoted on his blog is one of the most mind-numbingly stupid statements I have ever heard outside of a political speech.

“Even though a bad team of developers tends to be the No. 1 cause of software project failures…”

I have never seen any statistics which support this statement. In 20+ years, I have never been part of a project (either as a member or as an observer) which would support this statement. I have been involved in projects where stellar teams overcame bad management, bad scheduling and many other common obstacles, but never have I seen a well-managed, well-thought-out project fail because the programmers just were not smart enough. I would challenge Joel to provide any evidence to support this.

Then again, I have never seen anyone stupid enough to have hired an entire team of stupid people, and then been stupid enough to keep them. If this is the case, you have a much more serious problem than dumb programmers.

Also, while it would be nice to have the luxury of hiring only exactly the developers who fit your profile, that is a luxury most of us do not have (see my previous post on hiring). The reality is that you are almost always going to have a distribution of talents on your team – you are going to have stars, you are going to have duds, and you are going to have everything in between. I am always guided by an article I read in Harvard Business Review many years ago, where the late Bill Walsh talked about building great teams. The basic idea was that in any team of ten people, you are typically going have 2 people who are so good, they are going to over-achieve no matter what you do. You will also likely have 2 people who will under-achieve no matter what. The six in the middle may under-achieve or over-achieve, depending upon how they are led. And the deciding factor as to whether you have a stellar team, or a failing team, depends upon how those six in the middle are guided/managed/coached/led.

To say that most projects fail because the team is not competent is not statistically supported, is overly general in the extreme, and smacks of the kind of statement bad managers make to cover the fact that they are bad managers.

PC World – ISO Rejects Microsoft’s OOXML as Standard

ISO Rejects Microsoft’s OOXML as Standard

The title is somewhat misleading – OOXML was not rejected as a standard, but the attempt to fast track its approval failed. This is a good thing. While a setback for Microsoft, it now will allow some of the comments raised against the specification to be addressed before a new vote occurs.

Unfortunately, it means we get to listen to much more of the ODF vs OOXML, “Microsoft is evil” babel.

Such is life.

DesktopLinux.com takes a swipe at Vista to promote Linux

Looking at DesktopLinux.com takes a swipe at Vista to promote Linux, and the referenced article, I wholeheartedly agree with Loren on this, though I do not seem to have the willpower to resist commenting on this stuff. I have said it before, and I will say it again – the Linux community has to shut up about Vista, and about Microsoft in general. It hurts them, more than helping them. The kind of drivel in the DesktopLinux.com post just makes Linux evangelists sound like babbling morons. It really hurts any chance Linux has of being taken seriously.

It is also interesting to see the Linux community so excited by how much progress they are making on the desktop – as reflected by the number of diggs a statistic like Linux bypasses Windows 98 in use. Wow – Linux is outperforming a no-longer-supported OS. And they are up to 1.34%. And Windows XP only has 83%! Even the much hated Windows Vista has more than twice the desktop presence of Linux.

Face it folks, at the moment, Linux is nothing but a novelty on the desktop. In the real world, it is meaningless. Hopefully, in the future, it will become a real contender. But please, until it does, stop pretending.

Vista equals Edsel?

Vista equals Edsel?  (which just refers to http://www.linuxworld.com/columnists/2007/082307backspin.html)

Ok – here is a thought. If Windows sucks so badly (and not just Vista, because you all bitched about XP before Vista came out, and 2000 before that, and Windows Me, and so on), and I am having one of those weeks that makes me believe Windows does suck, then why hasn’t Linux won? Or OSX?

How badly must you suck if you cannot beat something that sucks as much as Windows???

(and don’t give me the “20xx will be the year of the Linux desktop” crap – you’ve been at this for 15 years – get on with it).

Eight compelling reasons why you should not even think of using Office 2007?

I read Eight compelling reasons why you should not even think of using Office 2007, and I think I would like to respond to these “eight compelling reasons”.

  1. New default file formats? Microsoft offers the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack so that users of Office XP and Office 2003 can work with the new file formats. I am not really worried about OpenOffice, since I do not know anyone who uses it. If you really need to, save as .DOC or PDF from within Office 2007.
  2. OOXML is Evil? FUD from the open source, anti-Microsoft crowd. While I do not support fast-tracking OOXML (or anything else) through ISO, the rest of the rhetoric is just noise propagated (largely) by Microsoft’s competitors (remember, they are in this to make money, too).
  3. The learning curve? The learning curve on the UI is minimal, unless you are a potato.
  4. Need too much hardware? I am running quite nicely on a 2 year old Tablet PC with a 1.5 GHz Centrino, and 1 gb of RAM. Hardly a high end machine.
  5. You will get viruses? More FUD. The DOCX format is safer than the .DOC format.
  6. Open Source is Good for the World? This is a philosophical opinion. If that is the way your philosophy points you, then by all means, stick with OpenOffice.
  7. You have to pay for it? No argument there – if you cannot afford to buy it, don’t buy it.
  8. It is proprietary? More FUD. Apple is worse the MS in terms of being proprietary, but no one cares, right?

Just my thoughts. Cheers 

Microsoft Windows Vista and Paranoia

There is nothing particularly new in this article Forget about the WGA! 20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft – From your machine! – Softpedia, but it was referenced on a blog post I came read this evening. I few thoughts came to mind:

  1. From what I have seen of the various services which collect information, most seem to be collecting information to improve the OS, adapt to threats, or protect the intellectual property contained within the software (I am not arguing for or against the IP protection, but if you installed the OS, you accepted the EULA, and are bound by it – no one forced you to do so).
  2. Despite the deep paranoia of the various conspiracy theorists, Microsoft really has little use for most of your personal information, and it is not really worth the time or effort to collect it. You are not that important.
  3. Unless you are doing something illegal, none of the information collected is a threat to you.
  4. It is interesting and ironic that a site posting this article to help protect all of us from evil Microsoft collecting our information, requires you to register and provide your eMail address in order to post a comment.
  5. That in a world where much of our personal information, communications, and movement is tracked in great detail (and with questionable legality) that people can get this excited about anything Microsoft might be collecting! 

Is Vista as bad as they say?

Over the last few months (or the last year or more), it has become extremely fashionable to beat up on Vista. Heck, it is a great way to generate hits on you site or blog, maybe get Dugg, whether you have anything useful to say or not. I am talking about posts like this, or this, or this whole blog.

Personally, I run Vista on several machines, and have few problems which were not related to the failure of third parties to provide updated drivers, or updated versions of software for Vista (sometimes makes me wonder if there has been a conspiracy on the part of other vendors to purposely sabotage Vista – but it is more likely just not bothering to provide what customers pay for). I also still run XP on a couple of boxes, and Win2K3. On my main development box, I also run a number of operating systems in VMWare, including WinXP, Win 2K3, Fedora, Ubuntu, and several “minimalist” Linux distros for playing around with.

An unfortunate fact of life is that all operating systems available right now suck, at least in some aspect or another. Linux suffers from many driver limitations (though this is getting better), and a wannabe user interface that spends far too much time trying to look like Windows, while missing the point of usability altogether. Windows (all versions) suffer from security issues, and from performance and stability issues inherent in trying to be all things to all people. I will not comment on Mac OSX, because I have not run it. It is also kind of irrelevant, since I cannot run it unless I buy Apple’s hardware.

Vista has its own usability issues. Some that are pointed out are valid. The UAC implementation is moronic. The UI path you have to follow to connect to a wireless network is annoying. Here is one I discovered today – disk defragmentation. When you defragment you hard drive you get this useful dialog:

defrag

Isn’t that helpful? No progress indication. No estimated time to completion. Just a statement that it could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Gee, thanks.

The problem is, this kind of thing is not just a problem in Vista, or Windows in general. It is pervasive in all operating systems, and almost all software written to run on them. Most software is filled with minor little usability gaps like this.

So stop beating up on Vista (unless you need the traffic), and start thinking about how to make the whole situation better.

Anyone else out there sick of “Us versus Them”? Afterthought…

This morning I had an afterthought regarding my post last night Anyone else out there sick of “Us versus Them”?

I recognize that there are cases where the debate is necessary, or at least may be perceived as necessary. So, in that case I would add one more item to my “guidelines”:

6. If you absolutely must try to convert people to your point of view (in violation of item 5), try describing what is positive about the solution you support, rather than ranting and raving about why the alternative is evil and will bring about the downfall of civilization as we know it. (“Microsoft is evil” is not a valid argument).

(Note this is one of the biggest problems of our time, not just in software, but everywhere. Look at our leadership – no one presents viable, intelligent alternatives to anything, they just bash the opposition.)