Here is another interesting area to look at during software development lifecycle. Once a web application goes live it is not the end. In fact its life starts getting serious once it goes live. New feature releases, updates and maintenance are part of an application’s life cycle. Unless and otherwise it is a critical application every other application would go offline during sometime of the year. During that time you do not want the users to get a “Cannot find …” error. The standard is to post a static page that says “The site is down for maintenance. We will be back shortly”. Today I was stumbling upon few sites and got into Whisher, looks like they were down for maintenance. See below the screenshot of their message. Makes a difference isn’t it?

Error and exception handling is a part and parcel of any software development. One might be handling the errors and exceptions technically well and make it easy to troubleshoot but the user experience also matters. If something doesn’t work and the user is shown an error page obviously the first reaction would be a let down feeling. But if at all something can calm the end user a bit, it would be in a way the error message is displayed. I was trying to open a document from my Gmail in Google Docs and I got an error page (snapshot below). Though I was disappointed the document was not opening, the message caught my attention and made me smile.

Sometime back I had written a post “Lessons learnt from Jenga“. The latest revelation came to me again through Jenga. Somehow I get fascinated to this simple game! Every time I visit my nephew I play Jenga with him. It was only this time that I found a variation of Jenga in a toy shop, called Uno Stacko. If you have not played Uno, then you have missed some fun, particularly when you are in a group during events or functions. Anyway this game is a combination of rules applied from Uno and Jenga. This makes it even more interesting and challenging.

After playing several rounds, in a particular game, we came to a “can’t remove anymore” point where the tower started to sway and even a blow would bring it down. Neither I nor my nephew wanted to pull out pieces anymore, it was quite obvious the entire tower was shaky and clearly the foundation was very weak and supported by only individual pieces.

An idea stuck to me at that moment, what would it take to do a reverse Jenga? At this point how easy or difficult would it be to construct back the tower to its initial state? I relaxed the rule and used both my hands in doing this, so that I can hold the tower with one hand and it doesn’t collapse. Slowly I started taking the pieces from the top and started inserting them into the gaps. Very soon I realized that it was much more difficult to insert the blocks than to remove them. Because of a poor foundation, the weight of the tower had fallen on its individual pieces that were at the bottom and it was very rigid to insert any piece near them.

I had to force and lift the pieces carefully, so that a piece can fit in. But beyond a point I could not hold the tower any more, inserting a piece at the foundation was harder than removing it. Ultimately the tower collapsed. My friends, here is where I realized again, how important the foundations are, if you miss learning them in the first place, it is very difficult to put in those pieces later because, by then you would become rigid, your practices are rigid. Less flexibility provides less scope for putting in those important pieces which are the basis to support for the future.

But there is nothing as impossible. What is more important to realize is that there is always scope for unlearning and re-learning. Creating a stronger foundation is always possible if you are ready to let go of whatever you have learnt (wrong) and build the foundation again by relearning it the right way, which adds more value. Traditions and old practices may not apply for every generation. You can sustain and keep growing only if you are able to let go of old practices that are not applicable and learn and apply what is necessary for the current needs. So my friend, be open to unlearn and relearn as and when necessary.

This post is part of the foundation stone series of posts.

I recently read an interesting article and a white paper, both related to unit testing.

1. My friend Ajay Rao sent me a link titled “Real programmers don’t test“. I was wondering if it was a post against unit testing. After reading it I realized it was not so. It is a good post explaining why unit testing is not a separate task for good programmers but is part of the coding effort.

2. This whitepaper “The way of Testivus” was a reference from my friend Kanmani Raja. It is a Whitepaper that tells why unit testing is part of your job karma and not a dogma in the form of a story.

It is your karma to read them and clear your mind that unit testing is not an additional burden but part and parcel of coding effort

“There was a farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning CORN. Each year he entered his CORN in the state fair where it won honors and prizes.

Once a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learnt something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors’.

“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir “said the farmer, “didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor’s corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions! Those who choose to be at harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others live well.

Success does not happen in isolation. It is often a participative and collective process.”

This story is a good example to demonstrate that you would be more successful if your peers are successful. The reverse is true as well. If you are in an environment where growth is not cumulative you wouldn’t gain much. When you compete with peers (not physically or personally) the pressure slowly and equally falls on each other that you will automatically try to match each other in terms of mastering skills. You are forced to learn beyond what you already know. Combined with the attitude to share what is learnt, the team together can grow successfully than struggling to learn everything individually. Experiences cannot be learnt from a book but can always be shared. When someone shares an experience you do not need to go through it. The “What to do?” and “What not to do?” is already available as a lesson. It is a way of fast tracking your learning curve. Your team could have a Wiki site that can be used not only for project related documentation but perhaps a section that captures the lessons learnt and tricky situations that were solved and so on. You basically invite people to participate and share their experiences and learn from each other. Participative and Collective Success is continuous and a better way of growth in comparison with doing things individually and trying to be successful.

Thanks Preethi Vaidyanathan for sharing with me the above story.

Most of my monthly payments like phone bills have an online payment option, I subscribe and pay it online and make sure I pay exactly up to the last paise. For those things that cannot be paid online, if cheque is a possibility I pay by cheque. Anything that is taken electronically it is accounted up to the last paise. I realized when I traveled to USA the first time, wherever I have to deal with cash, any balance amount I was to receive, I would get it exactly up to the last cent. In India, when there are situations where you have to pay cash, there are some denominations losing their value and people take it for granted by not returning it back or replacing it with something as simple as a toffee. Examples where this would happen include grocery shops, city buses etc. When I was young I used to get a stick ice, flavored with fruit syrup for 5 paise. It’s hard to see 5, 10, 20, 25 paise coins these days. Slowly 50 paise coins seem to join the list. A change of 50 paise is either not returned or replaced with a toffee.

If you have had an experience traveling in the city buses, particularly in metropolitan cities most likely you would have experienced this. The ticket denominations are still in such a way that you would have to give or get a 50 paise. The conductor (personnel deployed in the bus to collect fare and issue ticket according to the stop where the traveler wishes to step down) either doesn’t give back 50 paise or he writes the balance amount on the back of the ticket so that the traveller can collect it back before getting down. If you are traveling during peak hours, most likely you have to give up the balance. One of the reasons is because of the crowd, you would find it difficult to locate the conductor, and second you would be focusing on getting down from the bus in the stop you want to get down without getting stuck in the crowd. Even if you get a chance to get to the conductor, he would most likely ask for the 50 paise to return back one rupee or whatever rounded off balance is. End of the day it is not the business that gets this additional money but the individual, because anything in excess during accounting at the end of the day goes to his/her pocket.

What happens to the accounts of the person who lost that 50 paise? Usually people ignore it and in local terms call it off under Gandhi’s account. Not sure why it is called so, but I have a feeling it was called so because whenever you see Gandhi’s smile in the currency after you have lost money that cannot be accounted, it so seems to be a sarcastic smile . If someone tries to recover, it is more likely that he/she has to spend time and effort in recovering it back.

The thought seed - People who face such losses are usually of the middle class segment. India’s estimated middle class population is about 350 million. For the sake of assumption let’s say if every person in the 350 million looses 50 paise in a year then almost 125 million Rupees go into “The Gandhi’s account” every year. If there was a way to collect this amount by the Government, this can be used for noble cause, since it is handsomely a large amount. Of course there’s again a choice for the person to donate that balance or put it back into his/her bank account. What if there was a deposit card, like a credit or a debit card that works the other way? The business that has to pay back an amount (even if it is 5 paise) deposits that respective sum back through the user’s deposit card. Am not here to explain on how the logistics or the business rules behind it would make it work, but I am sure with some thought, there could be several rules framed around it to make it happen for the right purpose and this in itself is not used for more corruption. As always there are technologies that can help make this happen.

Images/Image Editing Courtesy - Naveen Kumar

I like Paulo Coelho’s books mainly due to the inspiration the book provides through his simple yet powerful way of expressing things. If you haven’t read his first book The Alchemist I would highly recommend it. His latest book Like the Flowing River is an intimate collection of his reflections and short stories. One of the stories from the book teaches five things to learn from a pencil. Even though I have heard the same before through a mail forward in the form of presentation slide, I loved the way Paulo Coelho had put it in the form of a short story. Below I have copied on how he has explained the five qualities of a pencil that we can hang on to.

“A pencil has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.

Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action.”

If there is someone whom you cannot hide from, it is none other than yourself. Amazingly you don’t realize that whenever you are true to others, you are essentially true to yourself. But tell a lie, do a mistake knowingly that you think others will not know and if your conscience fights against you because you did wrong, you realize you can hide a mistake from someone but really cannot hide it from yourself.

“Feeling guilty” can be made to work for the right purposes. In fact this has really helped me a lot to correct myself and stick on to things I have committed to. Because I know if I don’t keep it up, it will slowly eat my mind, unless there is something genuine stopping me to complete the work. Instead of suffering that bite, I would rather struggle, work hard and somehow complete what I committed to finish.

Though, be aware of a couple of points that can work against you in this process and put you in a trap. The first one is the anti-theory. The anti-theory is when you constantly allow your mind to bite, you become numb and insensitive. This is very dangerous because when you become numb and insensitive, it doesn’t matter to you when you don’t do anything what you promised or committed to. That’s when you dig your own grave. The second one is, in a progressive effort to complete what you have committed to; you might sideline or give less importance to the dependencies of the task you are taking upon. There is folk tale that explains this. There was a crow which got an opportunity to taste from a trash, a sweet made of rice and brown sugar. It liked it so much that it wanted more. So the crow asked it’s wife to prepare some more for him. His wife told him, that it needs some ingredients to make it. The crow got all the ingredients his wife had asked for. Then the crow’s wife started preparing it putting all the ingredients in a pot under fire. The crow was so impatient that it asked its wife repeatedly whether it was ready. Finally when the crow’s wife said it was ready, the crow was so impatient, that it put his beak into the boiling sweet. Because the sweet was so hot, the crow burnt its tongue and could not really sense the taste. It got so furious that it took the pot and dropped it. The pot broke and the sweet got scattered around the ground going waste. The crow’s wife advised her husband to not to be so hasty. The crow realized it by tasting few drops of the sweet that remained in a piece of the pot that had become cold, but all the efforts that it took to get the ingredients and the effort that his wife had put had already gone waste.

Even though the moral of the above story is “haste is waste”, a point to take from this is that we often have tasks that depend on so many things that takes its own time to be done right. If we miss this we might say that we completed it, but the final outcome may not be what is expected and it might be a double work for someone who was expecting it from us to be right the first time. If one keeps these two points in mind and has that guilty feeling to make sure that he/she completes what is committed to on time then the person is already taken a step to be self disciplined and gains trust among people associated with him/her.