After hours of typing and hitting “run” the thing would do something extremely simple and I would be frustrated. At this point I began to play with the code and make changes, from that point on coding has been a part of who I.

I’ve seen, heard about and read lots of things lately about how people are starting over in life, careers, etc and learning to code. Whether that is isolated to the circles I travel in or not I thought I would look into a bit more and see exactly how easy it would be for someone to get started and actually learn to code now.

Surprisingly the numbers of resources is rather vast!

• http://www.codecademy.com/learn
• http://code.org/
• http://www.codeavengers.com/
• http://codecombat.com/
• http://lifehacker.com/tag/learn-to-code
• https://www.codeschool.com/

Code Combat looks kind of fun and I’ll have to find some time to check it out, learn to code by playing a game sounds like it could be fun – but would it work?

Code Avengers also looks kind of interesting, prompted to do a survey to win a lifetime membership worth $125 (so yep a fee is involved I guess) and they have a bit that will catch your attention right away.

There area couple of things I have looked into already one of those is Skillcrush. They offer a free 10 day bootcamp that came in via email and was nice and easy to digest and pretty accurate. Nicely presented data and information and I honestly think anyone giving it half a chance would result in a considerable gain in knowledge and chance to head off into the right directions for a digital career but it’s not the end but only a beginning.

One thing that worries me about some of these new sites and “learn today” is the misconception that you’d be skilled coder ready for your first job/contracts within just a few courses. So if you are encouraging someone to start learning or even ready to learn yourself please remember that coding is a skill and a craft and takes years to learn, master and be able to apply appropriately.

With that said though one thing I’ve noticed some of the sites don’t go into or offer is “where” to put your coding, sure some talk about Github and other services but as most focus on “website” technologies none really go into a lot of details there – I guess it’s the separation between operations and development?

There are several options for “getting started” on the actual platform side. You can get a web host (google them), or your own virtual image like one from Digital Ocean (link contains a refferal code of mine), you can also download a package for your computer (WAMP, MAMP, LAMP). The packages actually provide an installable base for web development. The web server, development languages, etc.

These items in themselves however provide their own series of issues – such what happens if I can’t install something on my own laptop (for whatever reason – thinking work laptop and it’s not your in job description) or perhaps you don’t want a monthly cost associated with a host, or maybe that’s a step too far for you at the moment and you are just not sure about how to deal with all of that part?

Well there is another alternative and it’s actually quite cool. It’s a bit more geeky and a bit more technical but also a great learning experience!

I’m referring to the Coder for Raspberry Pi project.

Coder is an experiment for Raspberry Pi, built by a small team of Googlers in New York. It’s a free piece of software that turns a Raspberry Pi into a simple, tiny, personal web server and web-based development environment–just what you need for crafting HTML, CSS, and Javascript while you’re learning to code. It just takes ten minutes to set up and you’re ready to start experimenting with building real web stuff.

They have a simple 3 step process to get started and even without a lot of technical skills you should be able to get up and running within a extremely short period of time!

1. Download, unzip, and run the Coder Installer. You’ll need a 4GB SD Card.
2. Insert your new Coder SD card into your Pi, make sure your Pi and your computer are plugged into the network, and power it up.
3. On your computer, visit http://coder.local/ in Chrome to connect to your new Coder and start playing.

But what is a Raspberry Pi you say? Well that’s it’s a…

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It is a capable little computer which can be used in electronics projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn how computers work, how to manipulate the electronic world around them, and how to program.

And they run on Amazon at very affordable prices and from other locations as well! Model B would be a good one to start with. Add in a power unit, wifi module (or using a cable connection) and a SD memory card and you are looking at maybe a $50 investment maybe a bit more. A small investment if you want to give your kids or yourself a safe environment to begin learning to code in.

Good luck coding!

Founded in 2007, KIXEYE (formerly Casual Collective) is an independent game developer that
makes games for gamers by gamers. Responsible for popular titles like Backyard Monsters,
Battle Pirates and Desktop Defender, KIXEYE is the first to deliver proper game play experiences
on social networks. The company is based in San Francisco and backed by Trinity Ventures and
Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The game is called Battle Pirates and is a multiplayer online strategy game and kind of addicting! I started playing the game through Facebook but you can play from their own site as well, it’s a Flash based game but I think really well done.

They officially launched on Facebook back in 2011, and the press release describes the game as such:

Battle Pirates is set in the year 2067 and Earth is covered in water. Due to a terrorist-sparked
world war, only a small amount of Earth’s original landmass remains. With a 95% extinction
level, the only remaining survivors are split into two factions: the Foresaken, impoverished
survivors who rely on engineering hacks, guerilla warfare and piracy, and the oppressive
Draconian Empire, the once elite citizens who’ve now become a giant military complex.

Like most games it has it’s ups and downs and large community following and like most it has it’s fanatics, crazies and die hard fans as well as those who just hate it (but always seem to keep playing).

So the game is such that it runs in 5 worlds broken into sectors of 100 and you can travel throughout those sectors in the world where your base resides, however to move your base you must “relocate” it via a friend. You can relocate within your world or sector or to a completely new world or sector. I’ve moved to several of these worlds and sectors in my time since playing but the only differences you find are of course the players, the game elements are the same.

You can attack other players, or game elements (Draconian or Reaver targets) you can create an alliance or even join an alliance and thus attack players in other alliances or just put around attacking the game elements all the time. Each week they have a “Forsaken Mission” often called the “weekly” and once you start it you have 72 hours to complete Tier 1 through 4 where you get a prize randomly from each tier you complete. Tiers are based on points and targets are different levels paying out different point amounts.

For example here is a video of me attacking a level 65 Outpost with my Barracuda subs, the entire outpost pays out 923K points and each ship pays out 15K. Tier one is 150K, Tier 2 is 500K, Tier 3 is 2.5 million and Tier 4 is 4.5 million points.

Now once a month they give us a “monthly raid” which has bigger targets, more points and you can choose your prizes based on the points you earn; usually you get 4 to 6 days for those raids and everyone starts and stops at the same time.

The last raid was also the newest format:

This format eliminate the ability for you to work together to take out targets but added in different aspects which made the raid more compelling to try. The previous formats were similar to this one:

It’s a strategy game where different hulls have different modifiers and bonuses and different weapons, advanced items and armors can make or break your fleet (up to 5 ships per fleet – up to 14 fleets) so in theory two players all with the same items could end up with two completely different fleets.

The game is free to play but you can also purchase game to make repairs quicker, build faster, etc. For the most part you can do quite well without spending a penny but at the same time you can do really really well with coins. Those who are quick to open their wallets are called “coiners”, those who cheat are called “hackers” and yes several hacks exist but usually you end up banned at some point. The numbers of those whining and complaining is rather large depending on the areas you are looking, reading and active but yet still plenty playing the game. Gamers always get sensitive to change in their games so you take it all as you see it.

Personally I’m a level 67, some nice ships a decent base and do well for myself. If you want to play and want some tips you can find me in the game or through Facebook.

The game does play in real time so when you have an 8 day build or 6 hour repair then you really have that time to wait! Lower levels you can usually get some great stuff build and that very quickly so you work your way up into the bigger and longer times.

Battle Pirates will be performing an extended maintenance period Monday, September 8th at 9pm PDT. Battle Pirates will be unavailable until the maintenance is complete.

Apple today announced a new programming language called Swift at WWDC, which will replace Objective C as the language developers use for building iOS and OS X apps.

Craig Federighi announced the new language on stage saying, “We’ve used Objective-C for 20 years, and we love it. But we wondered what we could do without the baggage of C.”

Federighi confirmed that Swift code and C can live in the same app together, too, so developers can upgrade their code as they go, rather than replacing it in one go.

 

Apple has published an eBook on Swift, which can be downloaded for free, here.

I’ve been hunting for more on the language or a way to try it out but the best I’ve gotten is their free download of the eBook. I’ll post more as I find it!

DJ Adams showing how it’s done…

Season 5

Episode 7 https://s3.amazonaws.com/eGeek_Podcasts/eGeeks_amsterdam_2013.m4a

Tom, Rich and Craig wrapping up an interesting Amsterdam trip with everything from 85″ tv’s to meat pudding.

• SAP Demo Jam Amsterdam – Demo – CloudSitter – Winner

Nope not a mic…

They had to call security to Rich’s room…

Season 5

Episode 6 https://s3.amazonaws.com/eGeek_Podcasts/eGeeks_vegas_2013_wrap.m4a

Tom, Rich and Craig wrapping up the week long event in Las Vegas with a few random folks popping in not realizing they were being recorded.

• Drum Analytics
• Metric² for SAP HANA
• Quantum Fit

Season 5

Episode 5 https://s3.amazonaws.com/eGeek_Podcasts/eGeeks_vegas_2013_1.m4a

Tom and Rich hit the show floor, have some lunch, sign some autographs and bring a crowd to talk about the first days of the event.

Already have the tools but not sure what to do next, not a problem we’ll also show you how to connect to the various platforms and help you understand which one might work best for your current skill set and help you get started with learning new skill sets as well!

Tools in place, connections in place then of course it’s time to create something and to see how it works!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24

We’ll even have the experts on site to help you understand the various systems, technology and of course to share end to end scenarios and real live customer examples of these technologies so you won’t be left wondering “but why”

You’ll find us on the Show Floor every day from 10 AM to 6 PM. It’s like having our beloved Hacker Night every single day, all day :-)

Even Dark Lords of the Sith need a hug

Season 5

Episode 4
https://s3.amazonaws.com/eGeek_Podcasts/egeeks_Aug_6_2013.mp3

Unexpected but here we are – finally with another podcast and update on what’s with the eGeeks!  Our first podcast in quite some time with all the original Enterprise Geeks – Ed, Dan, Craig, Tom and Rich!

• Chromecast  – Getting the most from your Chromecast
• What Dan’s been up to
• Leap Motion
• Pebble
• Kickstarter
• Startups
• eGeek Toys – Portal 2 Sentry / Doctor Who 10th Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver

Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting

I’ve been a Bank of America customer for a long time and have even gotten other people to switch over because I think their online banking is the best in the business. So, today I was looking around for a particular feature and couldn’t find it. After searching through their FAQs I decided that the feature just didn’t exist. So, being the helpful customer I am, I went to go send them a suggestion. I was going to tell them where they should put it, how it could work, how useful it would be and how it would make their site better. Basically, a solid gold use case they could drop into their product backlog ASAP. The “Contact Us” link was nice and easy to find and on that page was a link to “Bank of America’s Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy”, which reads:

Bank of America and its associates do not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, including ideas for new or improved products, processes or technologies, product enhancements, advertising and marketing campaigns, promotions or new product names. Please do not send any original materials, suggestions or other items.

-Source

Ouch, well, so much for listening to your users and working with them to create a better product. I get the need to protect your IP but go have a talk with the executives at Procter & Gamble who completely changed their R&D model to get more innovation from the outside. “Today, more than 35 percent of our new products in market have elements that originated from outside P&G, up from about 15 percent in 2000″, according to a March 2006 article by The Harvard Business Review. I am sure this number has grown just look at their huge web presence for external innovations called, P&G Connect + Develop. Time to get on the Train, BofA

Years ago, innovation took place in locked basements behind steel doors with retinal scanners.  With the publication of Wikinomics crowd sourced innovation has slowly become commonplace.  Companies ranging from P&G to Big Pharma now try and incent external people into solving their pressing R&D problems.  This model can work pretty well — just ask P&G about the Swiffer. 

This week SAP announced a "partnership" with Innocentive a company that facilitates crowd sourcing of ideas and solutions.  The company has received a fair bit of press over the million dollar prize to find the gene responsible for Lou Gehrig’s Disease(ALS).  The company was originally founded around helping Pharma companies reduce R&D spending.  David Ritter, the CTO, said, "R&D spending at Pharma companies was growing faster then revenue, that is not sustainable."

Clients of Innocentive (Seekers) put challenges up on the company’s site to deliver either ideas or complete solutions to some of these R&D challenges.  One of Innocentive’s differentiators appears to be their ability to make the Seekers secure that the IP they are receiving is clear of claims.  I however, worry more about the implications of competing for a prize, being a Solver.

The company receives all entries for their review so that they can select the best one and reward the prize.  This probably works well in a space like Pharma or real goods where infringing on a patent is more obvious, a compound has a composition or a product does something and looks a certain way.  With software this is a bit more muddled.  The exact implementation of the software isn’t as important as what it actually does and why it is an improvement.  Additionally, software is compiled, obfuscated and it can be hard to even prove if someone has stolen or not stolen code.  Ask SCO and IBM about how much it costs to sort that out. 

More troubling, Mr. Ritter noted that "The bulk of problems on Innocentive are submitted anonymously, because they don’t want to "tip" their hat to the problems they are working on."  Which makes it even hard to find where your software idea or algorithm went.

When pressed on this Mr. Ritter conceded that there was a certain amount of faith the Solvers are putting into both Innocentive and their clients.  Personally, given my knowledge of SAP I would feel perfectly safe in giving in an idea and if it did not win, not having to check every new product for some of my ideas.  I don’t know if this is true for every person or every company.

Photo courtesy of soldiersmediacenter

The only other thing I was able to attend was a session run by Amir Blich about the future of the SAP Sneak Preview systems.  All I can really say is that it is great to see SAP looking to the mentors and to their community for advice about how to proceed.

However, exciting it is to move to a new city I will certainly miss being in the NY area and so close to many of closest friends.  I will remain at the same numbers which you all have and of course will try and continue to post here at least as infrequently has I have till this point.

If anyone is ever down in DC make sure to drop and line so we can meet up.

I was inspired to investigate this topic by Derek Wischusen’s post “method_missing in ActionScript.”  I saw it and immediately set out to build a port of ActiveRecord to Actionscript.

I’m not convinced this is the “best” implementation for this type of functionality but after much toying about it is the best one I was able to come up with.  Also, you have to remember you can’t eval anything in AS3, so in reality this is just creating Static Methods that point to an existing method that knows how to do something based on the new function’s name, but that’s pretty much what the Rails framework does so, I view that as just fine.

Goal

The initial goal was to set out and get a method like this to work:

The class “Blog” should have as little, preferably no, extra coding in it.  It should just attempt to call that method with no burden on the programming trying to create the class “Blog.”

Strike One

The first place to start is with Derek’s post that I referenced earlier, I created a class called “ActiveRecord” that was the same as his “BaseProxy” class.

ActiveRecord v0.1

The above code is taken from this “method_missing in ActionScript.” 

Then I subclass “ActiveRecord” to get a class called “Blog.”

Blog.as v0.1

TestApp.mxml v0.1

To even get the above syntax to run you have to go to Project->Properties then Flex Compiler and un-check “Enable Strict type checking.”  This will allow the file to compile. 

However, when you run the TestApp you will see an exception thrown, not by Derek’s code like we’d hope but by the player, “TypeError: Error #1006: find_by_name is not a function.”

Tweak the Syntax

Just to keep things on the up and up I want you to go back and change that project property back ( Project->Properties then Flex Compiler and check “Enable Strict type checking ).  Then we can tweak the syntax of the TestApp.mxml line 8( blog = Blog.find_by_name… ) to be:

blog = Blog["find_by_name"]("Some Text Here.");

We still get a type error from the player, “TypeError: Error #1006: value is not a function.” but at least our syntax compiles cleanly.

Why doesn’t this work

To answer this question you might first want to go read “Object-oriented programming in ActionScript Advanced Topics” but to summarize, the “callProperty” method Derek overrode only works on instances of the class not on the “prototype” of the class which is where the static methods live.  So some how we need to access the prototype before execution.  Sadly, there is no proxy method like “callProperty” for the class’s prototype, so we have to go in a more ghetto direction.

staticInitializer

The direction to move in is to use a static initializer in the Blog class to kick off building the static methods we need.  I will jump straight in the flow of the working solution.

Blog v0.2

The only thing we’ve now added to Blog.as is a call to staticInitializer passing in the prototype.constructor of our current class.  ( To understand what that means, check the OOP in AS article mentioned previously ).  This will allow us to insert some calls before anything in this object is ever called.  Think of methods like this as constructors for the Class object, not an instance of the class, but of the definition of the class — remember everything is an object.  This method is actually defined in the base class ActiveRecord.as:

ActiveRecord v0.2

So you can see a few things have been added, line 13, is just a list of methods we want to add to the object, you could generated these from anything you want(hint hint).  The definition for staticInitializer in line 19 is where the real stuff starts to happen.  In this simple example we will loop across the functions we want to add then create a new anonymous function that remaps a bunch of parameters to our function called endPoint, which really handles the function call.  This allows us to easily do anything we want based on, the class name, method name and argument list.

Tweak the Syntax, Again

If you want to make it look like a normal method call again, you can change that compiler flag back to disable strict type checking and then call your new dynamic static functions like normal.

There maybe more posts in this area, extending this concept out to create some very useful Rails-ish Actionscript libraries.

“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.”

Where has this type of spirit gone in our nation?  Is it dead or just sleeping waiting for the right time to reemerge?  It makes me sad I wasn’t around to see the US in it’s glory days, just in it’s seeming twilight, although this is a ray of hope:

Phoenix lander descends to Martian surface, shot from MRO

Now, onto why I’m posting today, along the way I found some annoying things about how FlexBuilder played with the SDK.  For instance, the .flexLibProperties file that is hidden in your FB project, is not the right format to be taken in as a parameter to “compc” ( the library compiler, which seems to require a list of class names to include ), so I wrote a quick Python script to convert that file into a config file that is readable by compc.  Here is how to include it in your Ant script:

<target name="setupClassList">
    <exec executable="python" failonerror="yes">
        <arg line="${helperDir}/classFileConverter.py ${lib_root_dir}/.flexLibProperties classes.xml"/>
    </exec>
</target>
 

It takes in two parameters so you can manipulate the output location of the new file.
Another odd part is that the application descriptor for an AIR project doesn’t get correctly populated.  FB itself fills in the <content> tag for you when it goes to compile.  If you look in your source directory the application descriptor has this string, “[This value will be overwritten by Flex Builder in the output app.xml]” instead of the name of the SWF.  One more little python script:

<exec executable="python" failonerror="yes">
    <arg line="${helperDir}/appDescrFix.py ../bin-debug/${app_descriptor}"/>
</exec>

Of course, I am going to give you the scripts!  Here are the links:
.flexLibProperties Converter
Application Descriptor Fixer

If someone knows a much easier way to do this just using the command line tools and/or Ant, I’d love to hear it!

My blog has been quiet and I’ve been off Twitter for close to a month now, mostly due to taking some well needed time off after the SAP Fellowship but also weighing a pretty big choice I had to make.

Stay at Colgate-Palmolive or leave for a job working for Adobe in a new product group creating a new enterprise software offering.  A new job certainly has its risks especially when compared to the stable home I have made for myself at Colgate.  However, with some good advice from my friends I have decided to leave Colgate to pursue the opportunity with Adobe.

Working at Colgate has allowed me to do so much and opened so many doors for me.   I cannot begin to express how much I appreciated all the support through the years the company’s management has give me.  I’ve traveled ( and taken pictures ) all over the world from India to Bangkok to Dublin.  I got to learn what makes a business like Colgate run from both the IT and business side.  I’ve presented in front of thousands of people in both the US and EU.  These experiences cannot be learned from a book and having this as my first job out of school was a great experience.

However, working for Adobe is going to be a great new chapter in my life — getting to see how software goes from just an idea on a whiteboard to a full fledged product is going to quite an adventure and I look forward to the challenge.

Thanks again to Colgate and more importantly all the Colgate people that made my time there so enjoyable.

For those of you keeping track my last day at Colgate will be Jan 18th and I will start at Adobe that following Monday, Jan 21st.

“[B]eauty and sexiness is in the eye of the beholder… [seeing] UPS give each one of its drivers a DIAD – and they did it years before the recent wave of personal gadgets – with GPS, wifi, scanning and other technologies. And with a battery that lasts all day. Can our iPhones do that?”

Vinnie does a great job showing how underneath the ugly exterior enterprise software is amazing and sexy.  Most of these posts are all missing the important comparison Scoble is making that Nick Carr picks up on here:

perpetuating a false dichotomy between the friendliness of consumer apps and the seriousness of business apps, all that Krigsman is doing is giving enterprise vendors cover for continuing to produce software that’s difficult and unpleasant to use

The post from Michael Krigsman(which although Nick beats up on chooses not to link to) talks about, how all this isn’t relevant because enterprise software is “intended to “enable core business processes” with a high degree of reliability, security, scalability, and so on.”

Enterprise vendors need to be keenly aware of the consumer market but, SAP’s customers don’t pay them to run around like Scoble and chase every new technology/website that comes out.  They pay them to make measured, smart choices with what they create and how they spend their R&D money.  Their customers do indeed expect the software they create to have a “a high degree of reliability, security, scalability.”

Enterprise vendors have an advantage – they can ride on top of the frothy startup market cherry picking things that work well and will deliver value back to an enterprise’s bottom line.  In the consumer tech industry, the invisible hand of the market is addicted to crack and has the attention span of a two year old.  The consumer market is chaotic, jumpy and prone to fickleness.  Online companies/ideas are created and destroyed everyday, and it is up to Scoble and other followers of tech to survey what’s out there, they need the thousands of readers.  The two industries have totally different business models, Twitter needs millions of users to monetize their software, SAP is very profitable on about 40k “users” world wide.

This shows the Enterprise software market is much more focused and so is their advertising.  Dan Farber does an excellent job of handling this topic and refocusing the discussion on what Gates actually said:

The business computing market, which is way bigger than the consumer computing market, no one pays attention to it. Even in the Wall Street Journal, and you think, oh, this is the paper they’re going to tell me about business computing; no, it’s all about consumer computing

LiveSide.net – Bill Gates, Mix n Mash, and the future of Microsoft

Dan goes on to point out why ZDnet covers enterprise topics:

We recognize that in the 21st century you cannot easily separate the two, given technology is deeply embedded in work and personal lives… [T]he financial equation is not just about page views or number of readers–more important is the quality of readers we draw into the ZDNet orbit

Who am I to contradict Dan when it comes to the determination of advertising revenue — after all he is the Editor in Chief of ZDnet.  In the advertising arena you can also point to things like SAP sponsoring golf stars, tennis pros, formula one cars, etc.  Who watches these things?  CIOs, and other TLA execs who make these decisions.  If SAP cared about CPM they would advertise with NASCAR.  Let’s just give SAP the benefit of the doubt that they understand their market more then Scoble.

I couldn’t agree more that Enterprise vendors need to make things easier to use and an all around friendlier experience but, they need to be smart and measured because that’s what their customers want.

For some reason none of these blogs comes right out and says the obvious.  Software development methodologies are like religions:  everyone has one and they all hate everyone else’s for no reason except they aren’t their sworn religion.  In real life, this is dangerous, expensive and prone to the types of failures noted in the blogs.

I haven’t worked in industry for 35+ years like Mr. Nizker but after a few projects it became obvious to me when you can use agile methods and when waterfall is the most appropriate.  Let’s try and do what none of the other blogs tried to do and break it down.

“Roll-out”

A very common thing in large companies (this was found via the CIO Weblog right?) is to take a newly developed solution and push it all over the world to standardize a business process.  These systems are the perfect candidate for the waterfall method.  The users can look at a system and see the gaps and let the people in charge of creating their “copy” of the system know about the changes.  This allows the “developers” to take the requirements in advance and while creating this new “copy” of the system add the modifications required for the new location.  Once the system is ready it can be easily tested with prior business cases and be easily validated for the new location.   I guess this is the “deterministic” task talked about by CIO Magazine.

“I think I need…”

Everything else falls into this category.  The category where the person defining the system has only half of a clue about what they need or want.  I do like the way Mr. Nizker classifies these problems, “[there is a] volatile reality, which changes on them every day [and] the systems we develop influence [that] reality.”  It’s sort of the Heisenberg uncertainly principal of IT systems.  Until we start to peel back the layers the people trying to define the system don’t know the extent of their own delusion.  You should think of it like therapy we must slowly work to the actual root of the problem.  You can only do this in an iterative manner until the user has seen the solution they have no clue what their problem even is.

It is all about using the right tool for the job and being able to tell the different before you start.  Just as using the iterative method is overkill for a roll-out style project, the waterfall spells total doom for the iterative project.  I rarely have a hard time deciding which tool to use.