Mahasen does blogging

Sri Lankan Software Industry: Hiring Fresh Software Engineering Graduates, the IPL style

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Year over year, Sri Lankan IT companies are getting into a bidding battle with each other to hire fresh graduates from our local universities. Mostly from University of Moratuwa.

This year, the average salary offer for a fresh graduate from University of Moratuwa has been 80K rupees, and the news is, the batch top received offers in excess of 150K rupees! In comparison, average senior software engineers with more than couple of years of experience in the industry today are getting salaries in the range of 80K and there are technical leads with 5+ years of experience who are earning less than 150K.

So, a natural question to ask, does it worth hiring a fresh graduate for 80K as oppose to someone with experience? Don’t forget, these 80K engineers have completed their degrees few years back - it’s not like they don’t hold university degrees!

To answer that, we need to look at what makes a good software engineer.

Ability to identify software responsibilities and encapsulate them in the appropriate abstraction: This is the core skill of a software craftsman. It requires understanding of software engineering principles, understanding of the business domain, understanding of the language and tech-stack in use and the skill to see what would trigger a change and what’s more likely to change - all in different levels of details and interests.

While this skill require intelligence and good IQ, it is a skill that should be mastered through exposure and practice. While some fresh graduates would outsmart some senior engineers in a good design, that’s an anomaly than the norm. Exposure to a business domain and mentorship from a seasoned software craftsman are things that’s hard to come by in Sri Lankan universities.

Good analytical skills: This is the ability to understand a problem and solve it in a sustainable manner. Needs understanding of how a given environment work and how the business requirements are mapped. Should be able to see beyond others mistakes, yet understand them and still see a solution, not necessarily idealistic, but practical and sustainable in the given context.

Again, while good IQ helps, to master good analytical skills, one need exposure and practice.

Competency in a given tech-stack: The knowledge what’s at disposal to use and the wit to use only what’s needed. Ability to see what’s sustainable and what’s not. Maturity to resist using every possible new technology in favor of building a sustainable solution.

While this is definitely something that doesn’t demand a lot of experience, it does help in making mature choices.

Software Development Process and SCM: Unfortunately, this is something that even the most experienced in our industry struggle with, even those who preach good process practices, don’t follow them. Even though this is something that could be taught, it’s a different beast in practice. Each of us over the years have practiced different processes and seen many fail - mostly not because of the shortcomings of the process but because of how people practice.

It is arguable in this sense that no experience in practicing a process is better than bad practices that are hard to let go of. But, in my opinion, those who are experienced really know what could go wrong and how to mitigate the risks in the process. And when a new process is proposed they are more likely to understand the benefits than someone without experience.

In that analysis, I think we could safely conclude that for the same salary, hiring an engineer with experience is always a better choice than hiring a fresh graduate, to get the job done.

Now, the question is then, why are companies willing to pay more than their worth to these fresh graduates, taking the risk of losing the loyalty of their current employees who will become underpaid, compared to the new graduates?

P. S. Further reading: http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.MicahMartin.SoftwareApprenticeship

Adopt this lovely puppy - please share the infomation

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 03:43:00 +0000

Bridal Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 03:41:00 +0000

Government vs. Scholars vs. The Opposition.

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 02:48:00 +0000

So, every political party, except for the ruling party is walking with FUTA, saying they'd have done the right thing and given more funds to education... but the government is like hell bent over on not even having an intelligent discussions...

I'm willing to bet, those politicians who are walking with FUTA too are with the government on this one; this is the next big frontier for them to fight with the government and they really don't want this resolved until they come in to power - even if they really want it resolved - which again, I'm in doubt.

FUTA needs to be politically independent and gain more support from the general public. When there's political affiliations, it is easy for the government to portray to the public that this is politically motivated. Because, at the end, this would be about with whom the masses stand with.

It should be government vs. scholars and not government vs. the opposition.

What if scholars become an independent political movement and the public stand with them? Having educated people in power would be really nice for a change IMO.

My take on current issues in local educational system

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:24:00 +0000

Teachers and Lecturers of government schools and universities should get salaries in par with leading schools and universities of the world.
Government Universities and Schools should charge at least a nominal fee, so that students and their parents would value the education they receive
Student loans and partial scholarships should be provided by the government for those who can't afford education
Scholarships should be granted for students who excel in sports and research
Students should look positively at part time work
Standards of the lecturers and university facilities should be constantly validated and updated
Private educational institutes should be established with proper standards and a framework to validate the standards
Schools and Universities (government owned) should be financially independent - i. e. They should operate with funds they earn
Government's involvement should be to maintain uniform standards across universities and to provide scholarships and educational loans - universities could grant their own scholarships and loans too
People should stop expecting politicians - who are often uneducated and incompetent - to solve every problem of this country
People should accept the fact that politicians are a representation of the general public - including in general competency and education, we cannot expect either party to improve over-night
People should understand the dyversity of university lecturers from competant, upto-date people who are truly committed to educating our next generation to those scum bags who haven't updated their syllabuses from the last century and are there only so that they could get involved in lucrative side projects.
There's no free lunch.
No one party could change the system
No one is perfect
Excellence should be achieved one step at a time
Much of the things going on right now is more politics and less problem solving - from all the camps
Solution should come from these exact people - everyone involved should put their ego and political agendas behind
If everyone commit to this, we'd have a proper system in less than a decade
But it would never happen in my lifetime.

දළ දේශීය නිෂ්පාදනයෙන් 6% තිබ්බොත් අධ්‍යාපණේ ගොඩ ගන්න පුලුවන් ද?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:02:00 +0000

සීයට 6න් නම් බෑ... ලංකාවේ තියෙන ප්‍රධාන පාසල් එකක් වත් ආණ්ඩුවේ සල්ලි වලින් නඩත්තු වෙන්නෙ නෑ... ඒ ඉස්කෝල වල ආදි ශිෂ්‍ය ශිෂ්‍යාවන් ගේ සහ දරුවන් ගේ දෙමාපියන් දෙන පරිත්‍යග වලින් තමය් ඒ ඉස්කෝල ඉදිරියට ඇවිත් තියෙන්නේ.

නිදහස් අධ්‍යාපනේ ඇත්තටම ඕනේ අයට විතරක් දීලා, මුදල් අය කරන්න පුලුවන් අයගෙන් මුදල් අය කරන ක්‍රමයක් ඕනේ අධ්‍යාපනේ ඇත්තටම ගොඩ ගන්න නම්.

ටික දෙනෙකුට දෙන නිදහස් අධ්‍යාපණේට වඩා, හැමෝටම අධ්‍යාපණේ ලබන්න අයිතිය දෙන එක වැදගත්.

හැමෝටම නොමිලේ උගන්නන්න පුලුවන් නම් ඒක තමයි හොඳම. ඒත්, අපේ රටේ ආර්ථිකේ එක්ක, තියෙන ගසා කෑම් එක්ක ඒක කරන්න බෑ කියන එක පිලිගන්න ඕනේ.

අධ්‍යාපණේ වෙනුවෙන් වියදම් කරන්න පුලුවන්, වියදම් කරන මධ්‍යම පංතියක් අපේ රටේ ඉන්නවා. මම කතා කරන්නේ රට යවලා ලමයින්ට උගන්වන ධනපතියෝ ගැන නෙවෙයි. ශාන්ත තෝමස්, රෝයල්, ආනන්ද, මියුසියස් වගේ ඉස්කෝල ගැන. ඒවගෙන් සමහර ඉස්කෝල පෞද්ගලික ඉස්කෝල, ආණ්ඩුවේ විෂය නිර්දේෂ උගන්වන. සමහර ඒවා ආණ්ඩුවේ ඉස්කෝල. ඒත් ඒවා ගමේ ගොඩේ ඉස්කෝල වගේ නෙවෙයි. ඒවට යන්න මිනිස්සු කැමැත්තෙන් විශාල ආධාර දෙනවා පාසල් අරමුදලට.

හැබැයි ඒ සල්ලි ගුරුවරුන්ට ලැබෙන්නේ නෑ. අයතා ක්‍රමේකට ගත්තේ නැත්තම්. වෙනත් පාසල් වලට ලැබෙන්නෙත් නෑ. ඉතින් ඔය ක්‍රමේ වෙනුවට, ඒ ඒ පාසලේ තියෙන පහසුකම් අනූව හරි, දිස්ත්‍රික්කේ අනූව හරි කොහොම හරි, එක් ආර්ථික මට්ටමකට වඩා උඩින් ඉන්න පවුල් වල දරුවන් ගෙන් මුදලක් අය කරලා ඉගැන්නුවොත්, ඒ මුදල දුෂ්කර පාසල් දියුණු කරන්නත්, ගුරුවරුන්ගේ පඩි වැඩි කරන්නත් යොදවන්න පුලුවන් නේද?

විශ්ව විද්‍යාල පද්ධතියටත් මේ ක්‍රමේට සමාන දෙයක් කරන්න පුලුවන්. විශ්ව විද්‍යාල සිසුන්ට අර්ධ කාලීන රැකියා කරන්නත්, අධ්‍යාපණ වියදම් සඳහා අඩු පොලී ණය ලබා ගන්නත් ආණ්ඩුව පහසුකම් සපයා දෙන්න ඕනේ... ඒ ණය රැකියා කරන කාලේක ගෙවන්න. එහෙම කරලා, විශ්ව විද්‍යාල අධ්‍යාපණේට සාධාරණ මුදලක් අය කරාට කමක් නෑ. දැනටත් ආණ්ඩුවේ විශ්ව විද්‍යාල හැම එකකම පශ්චාත් උපාධි සඳහා අයකිරීම් කරනවා - ඒක සාධාරණ අය කිරීමක්.

එහෙම කරොත්, විශ්ව විද්‍යාල ප්‍රවේශයට සුදුසු කම් ලබන හැමෝටම ඒ සඳහා අවකාශ සලසන්න පුලුවන් වේවි. දැනට ඒ සඳහා අවකාශ ලැබෙන්නේ 16% විතර පමණයි.

මේ 6% ඉල්ලීම, දැනට තියෙන මඩ ගොහොරුව තවත් මඩ කිරීමක් මිසක් අධ්‍යාපණ ප්‍රශ්නෙට විසඳුමක් විදිහට මම දකින්නේ නෑ.

මේ 1800 ගනන් වල රුසියාව නොවෙයි, සමාජයේ දුප්පතුන් සහ පොහොසතුන් පමණක් සිටිය.. මේ සමාජයේ සැලකිය යුතු ප්‍රමාණයක් මධ්‍යම පාණ්තිකයින්, භාණ්ඩ හා සේවා සඳහා සාධාරණ මිලක් ගෙවිය හැකි සහ එසේ ගෙවීමට කැමති...

Some recent photos

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:18:00 +0000

What's on the news?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Couple of years ago news was on banning internet porn, raided porn rental joints, busted happy ending massage parlors and prostitution rigs etc.

Now, the news is on pedophiles, rapists, molesters and generally sexual crimes being on the high.

I’m just saying…

nah… no point in wasting my time writing this...

http://blog.icloneable.com/2010/11/prostitution-and-porn.html

Thoughts, dreams and consciousness of self

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:09:00 +0000

What we perceive as self is essentially a continuous flow of thoughts, leading from one to another, and awareness of stimuli that come through the senses... that includes senses within as well, on top of the five external. (i. e. things like hunger, sex drive, need to pee etc. etc.)

In different beliefs, this is called soul, spirit (chi?) etc. and is thought to be independent of the body itself. Thus, we hear out of body experiences, life after death, re-incarnation, going to hell or heaven and all that... that’s believing that our consciousness of self, would survive after death.

I believe that is not the case. There’s so much evidence in front of us, which supports that to be a fact. But we simply ignore them and go out looking for proof of life after death and re-incarnation. Because that’s what we really want to believe. We don’t want to die and that to be the end. We need to live beyond the death of out body; find an answer to the ultimate questions of life, suffering and universe.

A simple observation would show you weakened or lost awareness of self of those who have suffered brain damage or got Alzheimer's decease or other conditions that weakens or kills the brain. A patient under anesthesia doesn’t feel a thing even when doctors open the rib cage; patient only start to suffer, when his brain is awake again. When we are in deep sleep, we don’t have a flow of thoughts going on, nor are we aware of stimuli of the senses.

Another good point is that if our consciousness really is independent of the body, we should be able to think even while our body is sleeping. But as we fall asleep, we lose our awareness of self, because the brain sleeps too.

People argue that dreams are proof of our consciousness being active while we sleep. But firstly, if that’s the case, instead of experiencing nightmares and fantasy we should really be thinking, the same way we think while we are awake.

Secondly and most importantly, studies show that we dream only when we are close to being awake, not when we are in deep sleep. During a night’s sleep, we pass several dreaming stages, when the brain come closer to be awake, but goes back to sleep. When we wake up, we only remember the last dream we were having, not any between. Unless we were waken, and fell back in to sleep.

It may be disheartening to believe that when the brain is dead, that’s the end of being; given that all of our culture is developed around the idea of karma, samsara and re-incarnation. But, I simply think, we’ve been ignoring the facts much too long, and death really is the end of everything.

So, what then of moral values, happiness and other feelings? I'd write about them too in my next post, and explain why meditation still is a good idea...

Consciousness of self, death and religion

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:22:00 +0000

Consciousness of self is a manifestation of the brain, brain weakens – your awareness of self weakens, brain dies – you die. Period. There’s nothing going to hell or heaven, nor gets re-born. Accept that and you don’t need a religion to pamper you.

But, your brain wouldn’t want you believing that would it? It’s, much like any other organism, wants to last for as long as possible so that it could re-produce its kind as much as possible.

It tells you that YOU are independent of YOUR body. It’s about YOU… YOU!

...and then; you get the question, when you die, you lose your body… what will happen to YOU then? (Because you believe that you exists independent of your brain!)

There’s no way of knowing… you are scared of the unknown (This is a survival strategy BTW..., not really meant for this particular problem, but unavoidably it comes to this.). You freak out.

And there comes someone, who has no clue of the fact any more than you do, telling you some bullshit of a creator or stopping of a cycle or that kind of a story, which gives you an answer to the question "what happens to ME after I die?"… and some other baggage along with that. If you take for granted that you exist independent of your physical body and refuse to believe that your consciousness is a result of bio chemical / magnetic reaction (or whatever the shit that goes in the brain, I'm no medical doctor) then, you really need an answer to calm yourself down of the fear of death. So, you'd buy whatever the story is most accessible or sounds most plausible to you.

Either way is fine; but the problem is… most religions don’t stop at explaining what happens after death. Probably because those who’ve been preaching them realized that once they have a good grip of the masses with the explanation of death, they could get them to do anything for them.

Some chose to kill their enemies, some chose to earn more money, and some very few actually chose to do good to the man kind...

Anyways,

If you really have to find answers, the most important question to ask should be, why the fuck does every fucking organism re-produce and want to live as long as possible? I mean, even the smallest organism without brains do that right? So, that for me is the most mysterious question.

Really… why? They die eventually, and leaving behind offspring doesn’t serve them any good after that.

(Don’t get me started on having kids so that they would look after you when you are old – that’s just bullshit - I'll write something on that later)

Entrance

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:09:00 +0000

I always wanted to capture this entrance passage without any person in it, but given that I don't visit the temple of tooth often enough and it's always crowded, it wasn't easy getting the shot.

On the day of Sinhala avurudu though, I had my chance - for about 10 seconds. Wish the two people at the end of the passage were family, but they are not.

I'm speaking at CSSL next month about SOLID principles

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:25:00 +0000

Dul

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Clean up your Island first!

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:15:00 +0000

[This was received through email, addressed to all Sri Lankans]

I am a regular visitor to Sri Lanka and for the past 10 years I have enjoyed coming here for both work and leisure; currently I am here on holiday and have covered quite a sizeable chunk of the Island in my pursuit of the stunning landscapes and fascinating wildlife that Sri Lanka has to offer, but I now feel I need to criticise your attitude towards tourism. Firstly, why don’t you clean up your Island – it’s beautiful as nature intended, it doesn’t need pink and blue plastic lunch wraps, plastic bags, cans, rags and packaging strewn all over the beaches and carried wherever the wind or rain chooses. It looks so unsightly and the biggest culprits of disseminating the litter are the day trippers from Colombo and the big cities who come to spend a day on the beach with friends and family. Perhaps they should take their rubbish home with them or better still, decent rubbish bins should be provided and regularly cleared. Why are there large and small chunks of concrete rubble on walkways and beach paths each piece acting as a trap for more litter? In the West, garbage is big business. We spend billions on disposal of rubbish. Householders need to divide their garbage into three or four different containers, ready for re-cycling so we are very aware, we’ve been brainwashed and it offends. Do you really want to be known as a dirty Island? I am generalizing. Some areas are absolutely pristine, there is no trash anywhere, there is obviously a system in place in some areas; compare the popular beach of MIrissa which looks like a garbage dump (the locals should be ashamed of themselves), with the spotless main road past Unawatuna.

The other complaint is your dogs; I know I’m not the first, but is it really so difficult to keep your dog population healthy and happy? Nobody takes responsibility for the street dogs, but they do get fed and so enjoy a fairly happy and sociable existence, but why can’t there be regular neutering? Why do your dogs have to walk around with limps and mange? Why are they always scratching? You have no idea what a turn-off this is for the foreign tourist, who probably comes from a country where dogs enjoy the same medical perks as humans and irresponsible owners are taken to court - we do notice but we are polite and say nothing. There is no need for culling, just a realistic attitude to the status quo.

I usually travel with my partner or with a group of tourists but a few times recently I have been on my own and was unhappy about the number of men who approached me asking inane questions regarding my marital status and where I was staying, do Sri Lankan women have this experience? One of Sri Lanka’s big attractions for all visitors is the friendliness of the inhabitants - they make you feel welcome - but there is a fine line between friendliness and imposition.

On reading this, you may well say, well don’t come if you don’t like it. Of course that is true, but do you want more tourists or don’t you?

The decision is yours.

W. S. Bryden,
UK.

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:40:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:52:00 +0000

Some old memories worth publishing...

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:01:00 +0000

On the shoot-out

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:22:00 +0000

So here’s what I think (knowing that nobody cares what I think).

In 2009 Mahinda really wanted to win the western provincial council election big, specifically he wanted to win Colombo district big. This was at the very late stages of the war, a strong election win was needed for him to show the world that people approve the war. A big win in UNP stronghold Colombo would have created good news, and also made good grounds for the upcoming parliamentary elections (Presidential elections were probably not planned then).

The previous election results for Colombo wasn’t that good. The win was marginal; and that too at a weak period of UNP with people starting to reject the cease fire agreement. worst of all, there weren’t any strong candidates for UPFA in Colombo.

2004 Provincial Council Elections, Colombo District | Votes

POLITICAL PARTY	VOTES	%	SEATS
UNITED PEOPLE'S FREEDOM ALLIANCE	322,653	49.11	25
UNITED NATIONAL PARTY	276,759	42.12	15

2004 Provincial Council Elections, Colombo District | Top candidates of UPFA

Candidate	Preferential votes
Aruna Hemapala	36,029
Andarage Don Gamini Thilakasiri	34,992
H. Kanchana Peiris	34,658

So, Mahinda did what he does the best, bought a couple of candidates from the UNP, not with money, but with power! Duminda Silva and Thilanga Sumathipala. These two had enough money of their own for them to be bought with money, what they lacked while in opposition is power, and that’s what Mahinda had to offer them. The deal probably was win me Colombo and I’ll give you parliamentary tickets and organizer posts.

Results were quite clear, win they did. They literally bought votes for themselves spending insane amounts of money.

2009 Provincial Council Elections, Colombo District | Votes

POLITICAL PARTY	VOTES	%	SEATS
UNITED PEOPLE'S FREEDOM ALLIANCE	530,370	57.78	25
UNITED NATIONAL PARTY	327,571	35.69	15

2009 Provincial Council Elections, Colombo District | Top candidates of UPFA

Candidate	Preferential votes
Arumadura Lorence Romelo Duminda Silva	165,128
Uduwatuwage Janathpriya Thilanga Sumathipala	159,603
Udaya Prabhath Gammanpila	116,144

So, Duminda and Thilanga got their parliamentary election tickets and organizer posts as promised. But, unfortunately, that meant someone else lost their organizer post and possibly election tickets. To compensate for this, Mahinda offered Bharatha some other posts including the presidential advisor post.

For Duminda, the electoral seat doesn’t matter. He buys votes – literally. So he could go in to any area, throw some cash around, muscle out any resistance and get voted. But for someone like Bharatha, getting voted depends a lot on relationship building and small scale spending's over a lifetime. And giving his electoral seat to Duminda meant the end of his active political career; presidential advisor post didn’t really compensated for that. Thus started the battle between Duminda and Bharatha.

Where did Duminda get his money from? I don’t know. His brother owns few radio stations and they probably have other businesses. Some say it’s drugs. Can’t rule that out, but it’s highly unlikely that Rajapaksha’s would get a drug dealer in to the defense secretariat. Most claim drugs because they don’t know people could actually make an insane amount of money with legit businesses. And all they could think of is drugs.

There are no black or white characters, they are all shades of grey. Duminda had lot of thugs surrounding him, and I wouldn’t believe if someone said Bharatha didn’t. And most of all, I don’t think either of these two had got into a fight of this nature where the other party responded in the same way. They are probably so used to going in with brute force and shooting away the opponents.

So, when the first to get out of the vehicles – be it Duminda or Bharatha – started waving the guns around, probably didn’t expect the other party to do the same. And they didn’t know what to do next. They either had to pack-up and leave, or shoot. Alcohol probably stopped them from making the wise move and shoot they did. The ones with most guns, made the most kills. But I don’t think Bharatha’s group didn’t shoot back, or Duminda didn’t get shot, as some bloggers claim. With three bullets in the head, I’d be really surprised if he’s not vegetable now.

So, is this Mahinda’s fault for bringing in a thug from UNP to muscle out – and kill in this instance - the old SLFPers who helped him vin the elections? It’s obviously a consequence of a series of incidents, but I don’t think it could be directly attributed to bringing Duminda and Thilanga in to SLFP. Mahinda is just another grey character, with good and bad, making decisions which he thinks is right for him, his family, his friends and after some more items in that list, the country (hopefully).

Related: http://indi.ca/2011/10/hearsay-about-duminda-silva/

A quick recap on the weekend in Trinco..

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:08:00 +0000

ඇයට කුමක් වීද?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:11:00 +0000

2007 වසරේ මාව ඇමෙරිකාවට යැව්වා ඒ කාලේ මම වැඩ කරපු ඔපීසියෙන්. මුලින් විස්කොන්සින් ප්‍රාන්තයේ මිල්වූකී වල මට මාස පහක් විතර ඉන්න උණා. මට නම් මිල්වූකි මෙලෝ රහක් නැති පලාතක්. මම එහෙට ගියේ 2007 දෙසැම්බර් පළමුදා, එදා එහෙට හිම කුණාටුවක්. මම එහෙන් ආවේ 2008 අප්‍රේල් මැද, එදත් හිම කුණාටුවක්. එහේ හිටිය මාස පහ හමාරම, හිම හිම හිම.

එහේ අපේ කණ්තෝරුවෙම තව අය හිටියත් මම නැවතිලා හිටියේ තනියෙන් අපාර්ට්මන්ට් එකක් අරන්, මම පෞද්ගලිකත්වයටත් නිදහසටත් කැමති නිසා.

කොහොමින් හරි අප්‍රේල් වල මම ගියා නිව්යෝක් නගරයට. එහේ මම වැඩ කලාට අපාර්ට්මන්ට් එකක් ගත්තේ නිව් ජර්සි වල. එහෙත් ඔෆිස් එකේ අය හිටියාට මම නැවතුනේ තනියෙන්. මම එහේ ඉඳලා නිව්යෝක් වල වැඩට ගියේ ආවේ බස් එකේ.

වසන්තය ඉවර වෙන කාලේ විතර, එක සෙනසුරාදාවක, මම නිව්යෝක් නගරයේ රස්තියාදුවක් යන්න හිතාගෙන ගිහින් බස් හෝල්ට් එකට වෙලා හිටියා. ගෙදර ඉන්න කම්මැලි හිතුනම මම ඒ දවස් වල කරන්නේ ඒක. මම බස් සීසන් ගන්නේ මාසෙටම, ඉතින් ගමනට වැඩිපුර වියදම් වෙන්නේ නෑ. අනික නිව්යෝක් නගරේ බලන්න ජාති හෙන ගොඩයි. ඇවිදලා කෙලවරක් කර ගන්න බැරි උනා මට එහේ අවුරුද්දක් විතර ඉඳලත්.

ඉතින් ඔය බස් හෝල්ට් එකේ තියෙනව බංකු තුනක්. මම යද්දී දෙන්නෙක් ඉඳගෙන හිටියා. ඉතුරු එකේ මම ඉඳ ගත්තා. සෙනසුරාදා ඉරිදා දවස් වලට බස් යන්නේ පැය දෙකෙන් දෙකට විතර. ඉතින් මට කලින් බස් එක මිස් වෙලා තිබ්බ නිසා සෑහෙන වෙලාවක් ඔතන ඉන්න උනා. ඔහොම ඉද්දී ඔතෙන්ට ආව සෑහෙන වයස සුදු නෝනා කෙනෙක්. ඉතින් එයා හිටන් ඉද්දි මට පුලුවනෑ ඉඳන් ඉන්න, ඉතින් මම නැගිටලා දුන්නා පුටුව. එයාට හෙන පුදුමයි. ඉතින් එයා මගේ රට තොට අහලා මාත් එක්ක කතාවට වැටුනා. එයා නැගෙනහිර යුරෝපීය රටක. පොඩි කාලෙම ඇමෙරිකාවට ඇවිත්, එහෙන් කසාද බැඳලා නැවතිලා. දැන් මහත්තයා නෑ, ළමයි රටේ ඈතට ගිහින්. එයා තනියම, මම ඉන්න අපාර්ට්මන්ට් වලම නැවතිලා ඉන්නේ.

එදයින් පස්සේ, ඉඳලා හිටලා අපි බස් හෝල්ට් එකේ දි හම්බුණා. බස් එකේ එක ලඟ ඉඳගෙන අපි අපේ රටවල් ගැන, ළමා කාලේ ගැන, ඇමෙරිකාව ගැන කතා කරා. ඇගේ ගෙදර ඇවිත් යන්න කියලා ඈ මට ආරාධනා කරත්, මම ගියේ නෑ. මම මිනිස්සු එක්ක බොහොම සීමිත සම්භන්ද කම් පවත්වන කෙනෙක්..

කොහොම හරි, මම ලංකාවට එන්න දවස් දෙකකට කලින් මට ඈව හම්බුණා. මම ඈට කිව්වා, මම ලංකාවට යන බව. මම සතුටින්ද දුකෙන්ද යන්නේ කියා ඈ අහුවා. මම කිව්ව මගේ අම්මලා අප්පච්චිලා දකින්න මම ආසාවෙන් ඉන්නවා කියලා. ඈ මට සුභ පතලා, වෙන විස්තර කතා කරා.

අපි වෙන් වෙන මොහොතේ ඈ මගේ අතින් අල්ලගෙන කිව්ව "ඔබ ආයේ ඇමෙරිකාවට ආවත්, ඔබව දකින්න මම ජීවතුන් අතර ඉන්න එකක් නෑ, ඔබ බොහොම හොඳ ළමයෙක්, ඔබට දෙවි පිහිටයි" කියලා. ඇගේ වයසක දෑසින් කඳුලු හෝ ගාලා ගලාගෙන ගියා.

නොදන්න රටක, නොදන්න අම්මා කෙනෙක්, මාව ආයේ දකින්න වෙන්නේ නෑ කියලා ඒ විදිහට දුක් වෙලා අඬයි කියලා මම බලාපොරොත්තු උනේ නෑ. මගේ ඇහෙනුත් ඉබේටම කඳුලක් වැටුණා.

ඇයගේ ඊමේල් ලිපිනයක් වත්, දුරකථන අංකයක් වත් මට ඉල්ල ගන්න බැරි උනා. අඩුම තරමින් ඇගේ නම වත් මට හරියට මතක හිටලා තිබෙබේ නෑ. ඈ නම නම් මුල් දවසේ කිව්ව. හුරු නමක් නෙවෙයි මතක හිටින්න.

දැන් මම ලංකාවට ඇවිත් සෑහෙන කල්. ඒත් ඉඳලා හිටලා මට තාම ඒ වයසක මණුස්සයාව මතක් වෙනවා. ඒ වෙනකොටත් එයාට අසූව පැනලා. දැන් ඉන්නවා ද දන්නෙත් නෑ. පව්..

Advocating and Opposing Agile for the wrong reasons

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:49:00 +0000

Development processes have fundamental problems they address, a philosophy by which they try to solve that problem and methods by which they implement that philosophy.

Problem that Agile solves is ever changing requirements of enterprise applications.

There are those who laugh at Agile for how awfully it would fail in building an air plane (technically speaking, proper agile will not fail, but it’s not at all the correct process to use there) and then go try to make an information system to a galactic government using a formal process and fail even more miserably. (I wanted to say kite, but wanted to emphasize size is not the problem). And this goes vice versa.

Smart project teams chose the right process for the right project. They don’t brand themselves as agile or formal. They are simply good engineers who are good at applying proper solution for the problem at hand right from the process itself.

How’s your agile process working for you?

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 09:40:00 +0000

Are you practicing an agile process in your team? Do you still find your team working through the night? Do you still find your software to be rigid, fragile and immobile? Do you still find changes of requirements to be nightmares to the developers? How do you suppose those situations are possible with an Agile process?

Unfortunately, this is the situation in almost all Agile practicing and Agile preaching companies we have around in Sri Lanka. I’ve crossed my paths with quite a few developers from these companies and they all have the same story to tell; agile for them, is the same old cycle, without the documentation and without a designing phase - which makes their development life worse. Non-technical project managers are still around, being called by other names, and to add to the misery, now the customers bring the pressure directly to the developer - because it’s “Agile”.

Is Agile a bad idea? What’s going wrong? Why can’t we make it work? Have you seen the list of names in the Agile manifesto at http://agilemanifesto.org/? Do you think those are the kind of people who would invest on a failing process? Besides, they’ve been practicing and teaching it for over a decade now. So if there’s anything wrong with Agile, it’s more likely in the way we practice it.

Management elements such as deadlines, budgets and sucking up to customers’ aside, we developers too need to change some fundamental ideologies towards development in order to make Agile, well Agile. It is not to say that the operational model doesn’t matter, indeed, that’s what makes Agile possible. Someone should be available to the team to represent the customer, acceptance tests should be automated and made available to the developers when feature requests / changes are made; team should be responding to changes than follow a plan; team should be able focus on getting a working product out instead of documenting etc. etc. which all agile gurus will tell you; but the part they don’t speak about; the part the folks came up with agile manifesto took for granted; the part that is responsible for more than half the agile failures in Sri Lanka is with the developers.

One misconception most developers in Sri Lanka have about Agile development is, it is coding without design or documentation. The other misconception is to think getting software to “work” means getting the functionality out one way or another. The Agile philosophy has very different interpretations for these and is defined with the implied expectation of strong object oriented concepts and design principles of the developers.

By the term “a working product” what’s meant is a functional, testable and maintainable product. Not just functional. If a piece of code provides the functionality required, but only the developer himself could read and understand how it does that, it is not a working product by Agile definitions. Developers are to get the code to work and then refactor till it’s readable, not duplicating code and as simple as it could be but not simpler.
Refactoring to make code readable, non-duplicative, simple and free of unused design complexities and code is a constant practice that developers are expected to follow whenever they code something.

The design focus of Agile is much more implied than explicit. In each iteration, Agile focus on getting a working product to the customer. The team narrows their focus only on the features that are planned for that iteration making it as simple and expressive as possible; yet not losing the overall picture - or at least what exist of it at the time. This practice makes sure that the design never gets complicated than necessary and serves to the problem at hand than expected (but volatile) problems of the future. One of the problems in designing the whole application at once is that the architect is force to foresee requirements of the future; with requirements ever changing and little understanding of them to begin with; this is not a task someone could get 100% right. That’s why Agile promotes this simplistic approach which could accommodate changes more easily.

Unit Tests for agile developers are a design practice than a verification step. Writing the non-compiling unit test is defining the contract for a component. Developer should do due diligence and consider who are the consumers and think how the consumers would want to use a class. Note that the tests are written for the public interface of the class, the tests care only about the functionality exposed through that. Once the developer get the unit tests to pass, he can then go on refactoring his code to be simple, readable and non-duplicative - one step at a time - without worrying about breaking the functionality unknowingly; because the tests are there to guard against that.

The next aspect of design developers ignore in Agile is how exactly the changes are accommodated. Remember that agile designs are as simple as possible meaning that when code is first written, it is not accommodating flexibility for “potential” change. But when the first change comes, the developers should follow the object oriented design principles and separate the changing elements of code from the non-changing elements of code, evolving the design in that part, so that a second change in the same area would be easier and simpler than the first. This practice prevents the code becoming stale over repeated changes, still keeping the code as simple as possible.

As always, developers should keep themselves up to date not only with the new technologies but of the time proven concepts; and the organizations who wish to harness the benefits of any methodology should invest on getting their developers in par with that methodology.

References
Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# By Robert C. Martin, Micah Martin
Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, Second Edition By Alistair Cockburn
Test-Driven Development By Example By Kent Beck

Yellow, Orange and Green

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 10:56:00 +0000

Kandyan Dancer

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sun, 29 May 2011 11:28:00 +0000

The specification of a method

noreply@blogger.com (Mahasen) — Sat, 28 May 2011 21:13:00 +0000

Sometime back I read Alan Shalloway’s wonderful book “Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design” which I think makes a wonderful pre-read for anyone who’s going to read the GoF design patterns book. But even if you’ve already read the GoF, like I had, Alan’s book still is a good read.

In that book, Alan brings the point that any object oriented software component should be looked at in three different perspectives,

Concept - which is the responsibility of that particular component (i.e. what it’s supposed to do)
Specification - which is the contract with the external entities (i.e. how it would be used)
Implementation - which is how that component is actually going to get the job done.

At any given level of abstraction - application | component | package | class | method - this stands true and is very important to separate these concerns in designing at each level.

I'd like to give a thought on how this is applicable at the level of a method. Let’s take an example to make things easier to understand. A method that converts a string to a number.

What is the responsibility?
Convert a string to a number of cause, but does that statement describe everything?

What’s the contract?
Defining the contract is the step which is going to make the responsibility of the method more explicit, and define the explicit usage of the method.

What are the parameters the method would take? Just the string to be converted? Should it get control parameters?

What’s the format of the string should be?

What would the method return if the format is incorrect? Would it return a default value? Would it throw an exception (what type of exception) or would it return null?

What type is the number? Integer or float? Could it be both? If so, how would the method return it?

What’s the implementation?
We should only get at this once we have the answers to the above two questions. And our implementation should depend on them, the responsibility or the contract should not change by our implementation - remember the dependency inversion principle!

So why is this post called “The specification of a method”? Because that’s where I’d like to focus for the rest of this post. That’s where I see room for a lot of improvements.

How exactly do we define the contract for a method after we do have the answers to the questions like what we saw above? It should all end up in the method signature. But, most languages only allow us to specify parameters and return types; so how do we communicate exceptions and whether a method would return null or not?

Java is a language that goes one step further and offer checked exceptions that allow us to express in the method signature what type of exceptions are thrown by the method; which I learned to appreciate only very recently. That’s a feature which make sure an application will not ever crash due to an unhandled exception, by making method contracts explicit.

That’s one good example that making the contract explicit contributes directly towards application stability and better coding practice. (But there are debates on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing - I think it is good.)

How do we do this in .NET? We could add the exception details in the XML comment documentation. But that’s not as good as the compiler mandate of java.

The other part of the signature which we miss a lot is conveying the fact whether a method would return null or not. We see quite a few null reference exceptions and quite a few null checks on methods that do not return nulls than we would like to in our day-today life. Some argue that it’s a “good” practice to check null even if a return value cannot be null. But that’s a pretty lame claim isn't it?

There are two ways that I could think of to overcome this. Obviously we can comment if a null value is returned by the method. But there’s no guarantee that someone someday would forget the comment and would not check null. The much thoughtful approach is to implement the Special Case pattern (PoEAA). In which, separate implementations are given to such anomalies as null for the same interface, so that the consumer need not worry about exceptions. But, it’s a design decision that has to be taken much earlier than you start to design method signatures.

Regardless of how we are going to handle these information in the method signatures, if we do define them upfront and communicate to the consumers of the method (and of cause stick to that contract within the implementation) we are bound to improve stability and the quality of code in our applications.