Have you ever found .NET Application in Macintosh?

This article was written based on my rough idea related to my observation as a software engineer. No serious studies has been made. Therefore, some of the facts might not be accurate.

I'm just coming back from kick-off project meeting in ***. We spent almost 1.5 hours discussing on the project. As usual, I just listened to the conversation cause most topics doesn't seem relevant for any interruption especially from technical person like us (me and my supervisor of course). However, it was after the meeting (during makan time) that suddenly give me some interests. Somebody was talking about how cheaper it is to go for Apple Mac rather than Microsoft. There were other arguments there, but those were not involve my interest so much.

Macintosh VS Windows

Most people know both Apple and Microsoft was, is and will be rival forever unless, one of them switch their core business into other field as what has happened to rolls-royce (they are in Jet industry instead of automative if you don't aware). As long as they are building and selling software and particularly Operating System, these two giants will never be good friend. The reason for war between these two is actually more compared to their war with others, Linux distro for example, since their target user was not so much different. However, here in Malaysia, the money might be the reason no 1 why Apple doesn't seems to be better choice for Malaysians. However, once there are arguments saying that, it is a lot more cheaper going for Apple Macintosh rather than Microsoft Windows when you sum up the price with the hardware cost, then I'm now thinking that the future might be different for Microsoft. Of course the effect is not an independence effect where only effecting Microsoft profit and loss but it is also effect any other parties who are depending so much on the Microsoft technology such as product distributor, technology supplier including the software company (software engineer of course).

Going for Platform-Independence?

Yesterday, this question is sometimes sounds more commercial rather than technical. However, today, it looks like both. Here comes the reason why the sofware company has to be dynamic enough to face the challenge. They must get ready to invest on time and money any time from now. I'm not saying this is an urgent process. But, what I really mean, a local software company cannot be so rigid on providing the solution. Yes, most markets in Malaysia are still using Microsoft technology and will use it few years down the road. How about the world market, have we ever think about it? is it impossible to the local market to be shrinking so much until we can't get any single project in a year. Or, are we waiting for the worst case to happen only we gonna crash our head thinking about the market in China or United Kingdom while never have information on what platform the majority are using in United States or Saudi Arabia?

This is the time for us to get ready. This might sound good for the company that already applied Platform-independence technology in their development. It's good, really good. But, did you really take this oppoturnity to really explore bigger market? If the answer is yes, why not take this oppoturnity to really go in front and leave all the close-minded local software company far behind. Stop depending so much on the local market.

Facing Challenge

The future for software companies is always a challenge. Greater challenge would be faced by them 5 years from now compared to now. This might required them to have 'foretune teller' in the company that can predict what the challenge will. I, a poor little software engineer, really believe that the next challenge will be the demand on platform-independence technology as the monopoly will be wiped out in this world in a day that is becoming closer by now. The reasons for this to happen is now clearer than ever!


Nasrul Muhaimin b Mohd Zain
November 20, 2008

A burden, A Hope

"If we fail in this project, this would become the great loss to us. Failure in this project will not be compromised!"

A task to complete a project is a responsibilty you can never escape. It is a burden in a glance, but also a good chance that could change your life. The burden would be a lot heavier if the task to be completed is done by fewer people. Especially when the dateline doesn't seem so helpful. In my 4 years of experience as a software engineer, I have been so 'lucky' to have this kind of burden. Almost 80% of the project I involved done by maximum of 2 persons. My supervisor and me.

Despite of all the difficulties and hardships, there is always one thing that make us moving forward no matter what. It was (it is and it will) a HOPE. The HOPE to be better equipped with soft skill and hard skill. The HOPE to have better way to handle emotion in the hardest time. The HOPE to gain better way to solve critical problem in the limited time. It is the HOPE to be better in life.

Handling problem in stress state

Earlier this morning as always, I rushed up to solve groups of pending task which was not purposely left pended in the first place. You know, once you're thinking that you've completed the task, sometimes your boss doesn't really think that it was completed. This kind of 'dilemma' always haunted my mind. The reason sometimes comes from you yourself didn't communicate well with your clients BUT it was not always the reason.

People sometimes saying something different from what they think. Worse, if the thing they said was actually opposite from what they were thinking. Unfortunately, you can't do much on that. You won't be able to prepare any voice recorder stuff so that everytime your clients 'change' their mind and keep saying something like "I've said this and that earlier", then you can always replay what they were really saying in that earlier time.

That is one of thousands or maybe millions issues once you deal with people....so just be patient
and remember what robinson said "Keep Moving Forward!"

Unforgiven mistake

Today my application log file show an error was happening since last friday (14th Nov). It was a simple error - regarding error on data type conversion, unhandled integer conversion from string - which is a very typical and kind of beginner mistake and also something that u don't want people to know about it (especially your boss and your 'bossy' client).

This mistake again!

One whole day I was sitting and figuring out what was the real problem..
One whole day I was wondering, why this error suddenly came out after quite number of months this system was deployed.

8 hours of figuring, searching, wandering, praying and finally.....again a 'complex'-like problem which was actually required an extremely easy solution. One column in a table of SQL server database was left 'null' while it was supposed to be some integer input inside. That was the root cause. Actually, It was a record of my testing few weeks ogo. I should have deleted this record in the first place at least. But I didn't.

I might have experienced this before (sure I have), but the point is, why I kept on doing same simple mistake which required simple solution. But in the middle wasting so much time that I can do so many useful things such as upgrading the system, or learning the better way to design the system or, start planning for the future project which is just around the corner (which actually the start date fall on today). Then, what was the real issue?

Start it with planning

Few weeks before I've faced a problem on this system. Something bad happened to the system. It was a bad timing since I was busy with other project. Straightly rushing into server room, log in to the server and quickly start troubleshooting on the basis so-called self-instinct. No proper planning was written on paper or indeed not even in my mind. The goal was to solve the problem as soon as possible so that I can jumped into the project at hand. The good thing was I finally solved the problem. While the bad thing was hidden to me until ..... this morning. This problem won't appear if proper planning was made just few minutes before I started troubleshooting. If the problem still arise, at least I can always refer to it for the next troubleshooting because if you're familiar with coding, it always happen that, most recent modification have major possibility of introducing new bugs. Therefore, with a proper write up, I could have saved a lot of resources (time + energy + money + peace of mind).


Never give excuses!

So, if you're facing problem while at the same time busy with some other things. Never ever started troubleshooting it without planning. Don't give excuse such as "I don't have time to plan, I have to finish this very soon so that I can jump into that sooner..". Indeed your time will be more likely to be waste if you didn't plan. Remember, 5 minutes of planing can save you hours or days if it is properly done.

Just sharing!

IQ or EQ, which one matter most?

Hi all,

This morning, I tried out one IQ test from a website and got the score 145..

Referring to the normal curve chart, looks like abu umar falls under 145 - 159 group which is GENIUS :-) alhamdulillah.

Whatever it is, please don't take it so seriously since, other xQ (EQ and SQ) sometimes matter more than just an IQ itself! click at the "Some IQ geniuses" link in the website if u don't believe me, guess how many person u know or at least ever heard his/her name...

please try out the test and let me know how many of us can beat up einstein and other world geniuses...


Free-IQTest.net - Free IQ Tests




Intelligence Interval Cognitive Designation
40 - 54 Severely challenged (Less than 1% of test takers)
55 - 69 Challenged (2.3% of test takers)
70 - 84 Below average
85 - 114 Average (68% of test takers)
115 - 129 Above average
130 - 144 Gifted (2.3% of test takers)
145 - 159 Genius (Less than 1% of test takers)
160 - 175 Extraordinary genius

Are you a programmer?

When I was an IT student, I once heard one of my friend (actually I heard this from quite a few of them) saying "I hate programming...". and everybody knows what he tried to say was he hate LEARNING programming. Full stop.

********

Okay, now let do a little bit analysis on why there so many people out there especially those who're taking IT course in University not really 'love' to do programming. Actually worse, since all these people don't have any interest to learn programming. There are few possibilities why, one of them should be the the one that I would like to call king of all the root cause which is the ATTITUDE.

Attitude that matter

This is not a rocket science to prove that how attitude has shape people's life. I don't want to talk about Covey's 7 habit or Ziglar's Over the top or whatever books - let simply see ourselves. What we are today is actually the result of our attitude we posses yesterday. Sorry, no more beautiful words, come back to the programming issues just now. That's the attitude that build barrier to all these people to start learning programming (even they've already sat for number of programming exams, unfortunately they actually yet to start learning the thing - or at least open their mind for learning it). Why this thing happen? Here comes quite number of arguments.
One of them is "I can't see the benefit of learning this!". Ermm...so why you take this IT course at the first place? Maybe we got this in reply (maybe this quite obselete but at least it was happening to me :-0 ) ".....I know IT is about doing something with computers, but.."...okay done! that's your attitude, you're doing something that would shape your future without any prior information so that you can do the thing in much strategic ways and better ways and most importantly right ways. So because of this fault, now you're spending 4 years into something you don't have interest in it. How expensive it cost! What I'm trying to say is some of the IT students take the couse without any prior information that they are going to learn programming. It's like a person who want to be carpenter but don't know that he's gonna use hammer and nail.

It's just a tool

Good news that programming languages are just a tool to create a system. Just like hammer and nail to build a house. But tool is important. Without them, nothing will be produced. Since they are tools. So we're always welcome to use them. Keep on using them will give you expertise on handling them.

What we've to do now is to identify the tool we're gonna use. Of course, know it function always comes first so that we won't accidentally use wrong tool which produce bad result end up blaming that tool. There were Cobol, Pascal, C, C++ at the old days (they're still useful today) and new generation of JAVA and .NET at the present. Their goal is always one - to provide right tool for the right product.