To begin, I will come up with some questions and volunteer myself to be the first to answer. Hold your breath, my friends, these questions come to you soon!
1. Name 3 improvements/revolutions in Java world that you are most impressed with.
2. Name 3 ideas or technology trends that you believe will be popular in future.
3. Name 3 major issues that you would want to elaborate about IT in Singapore and/or Asia.
4. If you need to share 3 lessons to your junior developers, what would you say?
5. Name 3 common mistakes that developers tend to make.
6. If you need to define you programming/design style in 3 points, what would you say?
Now, let I take my turn!
1. Name 3 improvements/revolutions in Java world that you are most impressed with.
My first candidate for this will be the resurrection of Reflection. If you happen to be one of the guy from the early day of J2EE that last until now, you must have gone through major self-upgrade plus re-thinking of practices and designs. The way we developed Enterprise applications in the past and now are simply too different. The differences do not simply come for syntax change, it is also come from change of concepts and philosophy. There was a time when I revisited a book of design patterns for J2EE and hardly found any of the popular design patterns in the past managed to stand the test of time. I would say the modern design concepts (IOC, AOP, POJO,...) would never be real without reflection.
The second candidate I like to mention is the Lean Software Development. Originally, I plan to put Agile Software Development but later decided to switch to Lean Software Development (LSD). Agile is cool but LSD is even more awesome, it is the cure of Java world from the mess we created earlier. Early days of Java witness bloated framework plus the factory style of Java development. Some smart people may already knew that this way will not work but to be able to convince the whole world to walk away from Water Fall is impressive. I still got chance to experience the Water Fall style in the beginning of my career and I am happy to confirm that LSD is much more natural and effective way of working. Developers have better chance to voice out and contribute toward final goal. I would never take a single chance to go back to old style working environment.
The last candidate that I would like to mention is Asynchronous Programming. I would like to include AJAX as well because it is more or less the same concept. Asynchronous allow us to do work concurrently and free user from waiting for background process. This idea shape up most of the improvements on client side and also help to boost performance on server side. I bet that it will be much more popular in the future because of multi-cores CPU.
2. Name 3 ideas or technology trends that you believe will be popular in future.
My first bet would be Data Analytic. You do not need to be a developer to know that Google give everything for free but steal your information. It is quite obvious that information is money. We, the one who build the system get first hand access to this money and let it slip through our finger almost all of the time. So, this need to be changed soon. The margin for software development is brutally compressed in the last few years, thanks to the competition from China and India. The greener pastures is the combination of data analytic with software development. With this model, developers do not only offer application, they also help customers to understand more about consumer behaviour and provide data to aid business decision.
My second bet is Artificial Intelligent. Same thinking as above. If you develop dumb application as others, then who is going to offer lowest price will get the contract. This price war will sooner or later put pressure to developers working life and make work life balance seem more like a fantasy. The only viable exist strategy is to stay in front and deliver what the rest of the world does not deliver. I find AI is one of those things. Again, you may notice that Google is already on the front line of this. Google Prediction API is solid and Google give you the ad that somehow relate to your online activity. Definitely, there is no one sitting there to monitor you but from the data collected, Google application tweak itself to fit you better. Sooner or later, people will adopt this idea and you will find yourself being spied on all the time.
The last bet is the popularity of UX Design (User Experience). I am impressed with the UX Designer that working together with me. The projects meetings are in Asia and Euro but they fly her there to join meetings. The way UX Designer analyse consumer, creating persona and manage to produce that design that fit each persona well is amazing. That make what they teach me in Information Architect course seem suck. Contradict to my original thoughts, it is not that bad to have duplication of data in your interface. Consumers don't care; so, developers should not care as well. However, any saving of mouse click for potential users do count and increase the chance of user come back to your site.
3. Name 3 major issues that you would want to elaborate about IT in Singapore and/or Asia.
What I feel upset about IT industry in Singapore/Asia is that our mindset are locked. Software house is still treated as a factory that produce code instead of TVs or cars. Developers are white collar worker that suppose to follow instructions and produce products. Agile is rooted but it grow here much slower than other parts of the world. It is proven that the old style of coding do not work. What have we learnt from Facebook, Twitter, WhatApp, Google,...? In this industry, the winner is the innovators not the hard-working people. Innovators work hard but working hard does not produce innovation. OT do more harm than good in the long run as it suck out the happiness in developers and unhappy people are less innovative.
Another concern is the way we think about management here is different from what I saw in Western world. From what I have seen, they treat management as one profession and one kind of boring task that someone need to take to let the developers focus on innovating. It have nothing to do with hierarchy or corporate ladder. It may be surprise at first but it seem more naturally this way. Project Management is the combination of resource planning, organizing meeting and none of it need a hierarchy to work. Giving manager more than what he need to do task is redundant and less efficient. The better way is the self-managing team as developers are educated and goal-oriented people.
The last concern of mine is the standard of developer in the market is too low. I got a feeling that any one can pick up a book like "Learning Java in 7 days" and step into labour market. This make interviewing very tedious and it is a hard work training new staff.
4. If you need to share 3 lessons to your junior developers, what would you say?
So, to every person who choose Java as career, I would emphasizing on understanding fundamental. To be honest, this is not what I observed people like to do but this only make it more important. Following instruction only make you a follower but understanding fundamental give you confident to make changes when needed and this is what we really lack here in Asia.
Another advise I would give is to take any chance to be creative on your daily work. If you do not have fun while working, office hours is long and tired. Unless you are super hero that devote life to make business better, finding a balance is crucial in long term. And remember what I say earlier, innovation make people happy and happy people innovate better.
The last thing I would say that presentation skill paid off. Do not think that communicating with computer is enough. Even if you have good ideas, if you cannot manage to let other people feel the greatness of your idea, it may not have a chance to be tried on. Moreover, effective team require effective communication. I do pairing everyday and I would prefer to pair with extrovert over introvert people.
5. Name 3 common mistakes that developers tend to make.
My first vote for this is Thread Safe. This is one of the thing highlighted in any Java course but I keep seeing people making this mistake. May be no one represent it to them like StringBuffer is threadsafe and StringBuilder is not.
The next vote is for scalability. I often see people writing method like getAll() instead of get(from, to). The problem that you do not know how much data you will have in DB in the future. Therefore, this kind of code is like a time bomb that willing to explode in the future.
The last mistake I would vote for is the trend of over-use of Ajax. Ajax do shine but only when you use it with a proper amount. Ajax to maximum should not be the way to go. I would recommend the resurrection of Facade pattern in client-server communication. The code is a bit hard to write but if you look at debug console in your browser, the effort is paid off.
6. If you need to define you programming/design style in 3 points, what would you say?
Look at the picture above, this is my illustration of DDD (Domain Driven Design). There was one time, I was tasked by my boss to build a system that can be extensible to serve mobile, serve web or any other protocols in the worlds. To do that, I build the core with POJO and nothing else. I would call it my PRECIOUS. I would let the MVC framework or whatever things I add on top of this core do the translation so that the world can communicate with my Precious.
Another thing that I like to organize packages by layer rather than business logic. Simply speaking, service sit next to service and DAO sit next to DAO. It go against one of the guideline I read that all class in one package need to be related. However, organizing package this way make my AOP simpler to write.
People complains that I like to rewrite code. I would defend myself that I like to fix logic bug. I count inefficient or not so natural code as logic bug. Handling with logic bug reduce my efficiency and cause bad mood, so I will always try to eliminate whenever I see it.
I like static type language and like to make the fullest use of IDE. People say dynamic language cool and help to speed up the learning curve. I personally do not need this. I already gone through 10 years of coding and have plenty of samples to clone. I will not need longer time than a ROR developer to start new webapp. Moreover, most of my applications are heavy weight-lifting category and this is where static type language shine.
Last words, I hate long code, if got time, I will try my best to shorten it.
I like static type language and like to make the fullest use of IDE. People say dynamic language cool and help to speed up the learning curve. I personally do not need this. I already gone through 10 years of coding and have plenty of samples to clone. I will not need longer time than a ROR developer to start new webapp. Moreover, most of my applications are heavy weight-lifting category and this is where static type language shine. رضا شیری
ReplyDeleteمحسن چاوشی
میثم ابراهیمی