M.F.O.N.D (English)

Decades of innovative ideas (Part II)

2010-01-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

The previous post (Part I), I began by mentioning a bit about some themes that emerged in the late 90's associated with languages programming, and declarative languages or oriented models.

The idea of these articles was to begin a chronological way, but
best style of George Lucas (Starwar) starts to tell the story
from "Almost Final" to make the movie then count the
beginning of the story.

The pressure on me "self" imposed at the time of the first post made me this was so.

But just as in the previous post, I return to compel to "post" something, which rebuilds a "disruption" in chronological order from them.

Years prior to World War II

In the history of mankind, wars have always brought progress technology, in the case of the First and Second World War brought great advances in engineering, which were focused on the manufacturing (industrial revolutions).

Mainly, so before the second world war, the process industrialized manufacturing was not entirely automated.

It was very strange that there was a factory specialized machinery and highly productive.

The few existing machines did not perform complex tasks and were very simple construction (union of blocks). Therefore their maintenance and repair was easy to implement.

Machines were generating more output than is actually needed for the time, so at that time was thought that this type of machinery produced more costs than benefits. It was one of the reasons why not spread quickly and had his potential is not exploited.

One of the things that happened was that whether they were beginning to fail, was not of high priority repairs and maintenance generally applied to it was reactive or repair what is not there called Preventive and Predictive maintenance.

Years after the War

After the post-war, came an explosion in demand consumers, which caused it to start implementing technology meet the needs of consumers.

With increasing demand, many factories were "business" or the need to begin to automate them.

Factories began to build machines that automate the process construction.

Over the years these machines have become more complex, and the same time, improved production times exponentially.

At such times, the goal was to improve factory processes to reduce the time, looking as far as possible (with the existing technology) to automate as many activities belonging to the preparation.

However over time companies found it was not enough improve the production chain, as there were failures in much of the process chain.

The failures were associated with continual breakage of machinery, which caused major losses of downtime time.

Since that time, companies realized they had to work to prevent such breaches to the effect that the times of
downtime as short as possible.

From that moment he began to apply what is known today as "preventive maintenance".

Incredibly, as they began to solve the problems associated to preventive maintenance, they began to realize that was not enough.

What began to be implemented to mitigate these problems was a style of "control system" very rudimentary.

Something came into this season, however did not generate any excitement in her time.
The birth of computers.

After "The Wars" (Post War and Space Race Cold)

In the seventies, advances in technology and research generated great changes and revolutions.

Thanks to these advances, there began to improve greatly the mechanization and automation.
In parallel began to increase enormously the needs of consumers.

One of the factors that are thought as a key factor is the fact that Humanity began to have dependence on the machines was no longer humanly possible to compete against them and without them was no longer possible
survive.

Everything that happened in previous decades began to increase. They become more complex machines, perform more tasks and works much so that they never stop working.

This produces a vicious spiral which occurs requires further quantity of products in ever decreasing time.

However, the factories began to fail in meeting needs of its customers.
By producing more, was leaving out things like the quality, safety, and environmental protection.

In the same way that increased demand, companies grew even more, and began to grow geographically.
Started to settle in geographically distant from their origin, with the aim of meeting needs of new customers.

From that moment he began what is known of "Globalization".

Thus, globalization began to generate new problems.
It was managed and controlled a single factory, dozens were managed of them in remote locations.

Not only competing regionally, is beginning to compete international, with all the problems this entails (Language, regulations, different "standards" and "Customs").

Throughout history, facing each problem identified, the technical solutions were found through trial and error.

To remove the fact of "Lucky", began to use methods science and research to arrive at mitigating events before they occur.

These advances have made the manufacturing processes have been high levels of maturity, making the manufacturing process change forever.

Continue ....

Is not this whole story sounds similar to the industrialization about what is happening in the software industry in the recent decades?

Translated from:
http://3dgiordano.blogspot.com/2008/11/dcadas-de-ideas-innovadoras-parte-ii.html

Decades of innovative ideas (Part I)

2010-01-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

The 90's:

In the history of computing, and particularly that of programming languages, you'll find how, from the '90s, few programming languages that managed to be popular or stand out to date. Most of those who became popular, are related more to the simplicity, generality and portability with an account of abstraction, patterns, knowledge management or specializations in areas such as Business Logic Management, Database, Artificial Intelligence , or related to Case or languages Functional languages.

Few languages "exotic" who survived and those who succeeded, was mainly thanks to support from universities or research centers in the aeronautics, astronomy, medicine, genetics and chemistry (among others).

But in the early 90's began to emerge in several branches investigations that resulted in what today is known as "domain-specific languages", "Domain Specific Modeling" and "Model Driven Architecture (Domain Specific Language - DSL , Domain Specific Modeling - DSM, Model Driven Architecture - DMA).

While the ideas associated with the languages of the fourth and fifth generation started in the 80s and 90s, the use of metamodels, patterns, and domain languages, there have been no use "popular" worldwide.

In the region (Latin America) there is an exception, GeneXus, a language (and a programming environment), which since the 90s has revolutionized the way business applications programming.

- GeneXus (1989) - A tool with real solutions.

I leave some reviews of the presentation by Artech about GeneXus in 1995 under the National Engineering Award (IAU - Association of Engineers of Uruguay).

"In any investigation, and more in a far-reaching as this, it is essential not to 'reinvent the wheel", not wasting time and effort trying to solve problems that others have already solved. In computer science, also tend to be a great error trying to develop software that can be purchased. It was therefore decided to work with PCs, including the necessary software and were accessible to the possibilities of a project that began with very little money. Accordingly, broke the " state of the art, the results published by other researchers, and the best tools that were in the market. It is almost impossible to be successful otherwise. With these assumptions in 1985 began a formal investigation. "
...
"With these results in view contacts were made with several major software companies in the world. No one had anything like that, no one had solved the problem of designing large databases.

Then there appeared to be an important opportunity to license this technology to some of these companies.

The commercial attempts ended in total failure for a number of reasons: the technology was more advanced than expected partners who did not have their minds prepared for it (did not consider it necessary or possible).

The country's credibility problem was (is) very seriously. It was very difficult for a high tech company in a developed country could understand that Uruguay would develop technology so advanced. "
...
"was still under investigation, was discovered in 1986 something very interesting: he had captured systematized knowledge of the views of users, so to enable the automatic design of optimal database, which met the original goals, however, refining the system process, could obtain a knowledge base that permitted in addition to the above, generate the programs needed to recreate visions "
....
"GeneXus is a different tool, however, struggle in much of the world by a segment of an extremely competitive market: the tools to improve productivity in the development and maintenance of applications."
...
"The success of this project involves a great deal of ongoing research. The commercial success is based on technological superiority, which is very difficult to maintain in a competitive market like this.

We believe this is only the beginning, probably GeneXus has been used in only 20% of the technology that has developed.

An existential doubt we've had since the principle is the understanding that the path we have followed is fairly obvious why we have not been achieved by competitors with more resources?. Perhaps the problem (and the unique opportunity) facing is that you are using a technology far more advanced than its competitors and, therefore, not fashionable. "

The full text is available from the following Link:

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aiu.org.uy%2Fgxpsites%2Fagxppdwn%3F1%2C1%2C4%2CO%2CS%2C0%2C61%253BS%253B1%253B13%2C&sl=es&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8 O%2CS%2C0%2C61%253BS%253B1%253B13%2C&sl=es&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
Thanks Google Translator!!!, original source: http://www.aiu.org.uy/gxpsites/agxppdwn?1,1,4,O,S,0,61%3BS%3B1%3B13,

I leave you some references for those who want to know a little more about these issues.

About GeneXus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeneXus
http://www.genexus.com/
http://wiki.gxtechnical.com/commwiki/servlet/hwiki?La+historia+de+GeneXus
Translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=es&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwiki.gxtechnical.com%2Fcommwiki%2Fservlet%2Fhwiki%3FLa%2Bhistoria%2Bde%2BGeneXus%20

On Domain Specific Languages, Domain Specific Modeling and Model Driven Architecture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Specific_Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_modelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-driven_architecture

Translated from : http://3dgiordano.blogspot.com/2008/10/dcadas-de-ideas-innovadoras-parte-i.html

Never settle

2010-01-13T04:40:00.000-08:00

Google's philosophy is summarized in the following words ...

"Never settle"

List of "conclusions" to which Google arrived on the basis of his experience:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.

I agree with most of the topics covered in the list.

Certainly find things with which to agree and others which do not.

We give you the link with the details of each http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html

When you read the details to reach their own conclusions.

I would like to learn more about how it works the Google Software Factory (Just curious).

If someone know something about its internal, it is appreciated their input.

Translated from: http://3dgiordano.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-conformarnos-nunca.html

Welcome to the experiment!!!

2010-01-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome!!!

Today is a great day.

It is now time to carry a personal blog, mainly related to the topics that interest me.

Many of these issues probably are also of interest to the wider world.
My English is a mess, but I will not let a language barrier hinders others access to information.

So I decided to conduct an experiment.

Clone all my content in Spanish, translating the same in my new blog in English.

Mainly supported by the translation provided by Google and its efforts to change the references redirecting them to sources in English.

So I apologize in front of all who read in English and find that the content is a disaster. I will work to correct as far as possible the translations, and of course accepting suggestions and corrections to everything on the blog.

Sincerely
David Giordano
http://3dgiordano.blogspot.com/