Posts Tagged ‘competence’

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Top 5 Untrends According To Me

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

My dear friend Ochronus posted an article titled Top 5 trends and technologies in software development that got me thinking. My thoughts below. Go check Ochronus’s blog if you haven’t, he is the lead developer at Arukereso.hu.

I agree with the suggestions from the original article. Yet, I would like to change the order a little bit; DVCS and then agile (with lowercase a) and then the rest. None of my points below are cool trends, in fact I can guarantee most of you will find them boring. But I think they are all important. OK, I hope you are all psyched now. Here we go:

1. Be Careful With The Buzz

Trends are cool. What could be wrong about following cutting edge stuff? We all want to be up to date, no? I think it’s good to follow the trends if you have the experience and the ability to filter the BS. I know a young developer who was constantly going back and forth between Rails/Ruby and Django/Python. I haven’t heard from him for a while, but he is probably still doing that same dance. Why? Because his considerations were solely based on buzz, not on simple requirements analysis or technical comparisons or personal experience.

2. Learn And Use An Old-Fashioned Modern Low-Level Scripting Language

To all the scripting people, like me, out there: you need to have an understanding of what’s happening under the hood. At the least to appreciate our high-level environments, at the most to become genuinely good programmers. Being a Python person myself, I think the best low-level language to be proficient for me is C. Many other high-level languages have C interfaces. So investing the time to learn C should pay off one way or the other.

3. Do Less Web Programming

Aren’t we doing a lot of web programming these days? Actually I think doing X development exclusively is bad for your programming muscles. Web programming, enterprise work or system scripting, it doesn’t matter. But web programming happens more than anything else. Maybe some of you have only been playing with it, but there are a huge number of us doing nothing but web programming. This is so sad; both in an individual level and for the community at large.

4. Learn How To Educate Yourself

What is a noob? Here is a definition and disambiguation (from newbie):

Newbs are those who are new to some task and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. n00bs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more. They expect people to do the work for them and then expect to get praised about it, and make up a unique species of their own.

Make an active effort not to be a noob. Learn how to ask smart questions, how to communicate others and seek help. Being polite is good but actually improving and being a valuable member of the community is much, much better.

5. Open Source Properly

It’s great to open source your project. But please do it properly. There are already too many unmaintained, undocumented projects out there that noone seem to care. Do you really have to add to that? As is argument doesn’t make much sense today. But if you really have to make an open source dead drop, please at least document the status of your project and your intentions clearly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some you think they all are obvious. But if they are so obvious then why are they widely being ignored? Is it because they are under-retweeted, under-reddited and therefore not trendy.

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XING Türkiye Social Media Win

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

I had a small issue with XING recently. I had reported this stupid message sent to an unrelated group. I’ll try to translate a snipplet below:

I have sent XING two messages to cancel my account, I don’t want to be a member.

I would like to take advantage of XING’s unique potential to bring people together, until they cancel my account, to help homeless children and elders.

WTF! This was supposed to be a business related group. If anybody and their aunt will spam all 15k members; thank you, but no, thank you. So I did what any responsible user would do and used the report spam thingy.

Here is what I had hoped to happen; my report is stored somewhere. Other people flags this as well. When a critical number is reached a moderator reviews if the message is really spam and takes the appropriate action.

Here is what happened; an hour later or so I got an e-mail. It said “if you don’t want to receive messages from this person do yak yak yak”. King-size WTF.

  1. First of all I had already done that. He should have checked if I did before writing an e-mail.
  2. More importantly, he should have checked my profile for a second. It says programmer. So, if I’m a programmer I am supposed to know a thing or two about these computer thingies, right? Clicking, double-clicking, expertise on check boxes and stuff. Telling me how to block a user is the same thing as saying “hey muhuk, you’re an idiot”. Even if we suppose there are such morons1, you still don’t have to tell it to their face. If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say nothing.

As a result, I got pissed of and sent this tweet:

XING Türkiye Support is clueless. Make sure you know who you’re e-mailing + take a moment to check if your advice has already been applied.

This is not the end of the story though. I received an e-mail from XING Community Manager yesterday. It was a very polite message containing the acknowledgement of both issues2. Nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. But wait, the message mentioned my tweet. In the very beginning. Actually the first word was “Twitter”. And it was concluded with something along the lines of “keep sharing your comments”.

Well, of course my comments and ideas are worthless. Especially since I’m not a very active XING user. But don’t miss the important point here: XING basically, via it’s community representative, says “you tweeted a negative tweet about us, but we are cool with that”. Why is it so important?

  1. They seem to be really cool about that. That means they understand social web. Conventional thinking is “I’d prefer you told this to me directly”, “we could have solved it between you and me”, “why do you shout, you make me look bad”. I have seen supposedly social media aware brands do this. It doesn’t look good. Trying to silence people is a horrible idea.
  2. You can win people easily. Beautiful thing about Internet (and online services in particular) is that no party has too much power over the other. You can’t intimidate someone because she doesn’t like your services and writes about it. On the other hand she can’t do much damage3. So instead of freaking out, try to be nice and convert naysayers to evangelists.

Most of the time complaining customers want to know there is someone who can see things from the right perspective. Someone reasonable, agreeable, fair. Most of the time that’s all that is needed to turn “<your brand> sucks” to “sh*t happens, no big deal”. My perception changed from “clueless” to “hmm, I guess that was a misstep of an individual” to “wow, appereantly XING Türkiye knows social web very well”. And all it took was a simple e-mail4. It’s not that difficult.

Kudos to XING for being a good web2.0 citizen.5

1: I mean programmers who couldn’t figure out how to use a web GUI. People from other professions might not know these and that’s not necessarily their problem.

2: What more could a user/customer hope other than acknowledgement? The message also contained an apology. But, I personally don’t think brands should apologize to their customers. Especially regarding to freemium services.

3: This is true even for big players like TechCrunch.

4: I bet it’s instantiated from a draft, everybody gets more or less the same message. This makes it even cooler though.

5: And special thanks for making me feel like a jerk. Just kidding, feelings are for losers. ;)

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CVyolla.com: It’s Not OK To SPAM!

Monday, June 15th, 2009

A regular surfer might not have proper netiquette. It is desirable, but I wouldn’t blame her if she makes something inappropriate. Learning rules and conventions of Internet takes time. As you get more and more exposed to different communities and tools and situations, you should pick it up.

An Internet startup however is a completely different story. If you are doing business online you are supposed to know what you can and can not do. You can’t SPAM for instance. You just can’t. There’s no excuse for such an act from Internet companies. Correcting such mistakes is marginally harder than correcting technical mistakes. Once people mark you evil, it is painful to fix.

Here’s a summary what happened between a Turkish startup CVyolla.com and me last week. They are service that send your CV’s to companies.

1. I Receive A CV From CVyolla.com

This may not sound extraordinary, since that’s what they do. But I don’t have a corporate account with them, or any other kind of membership. I might have visited their homepage a couple of times, that doesn’t count as a sign up, does it? So CVyolla.com is SPAMming people.

I noticed a username (my email address) and a login address at the bottom of this message. So I thought I should check it out1.

2. CVyolla.com Might Be Stealing Your Identity Too

Before I could log in, I had to request my password via forgot my password link. I couldn’t possibly remember a password that I have never created, could I? It became clear once I logged in (see image below). Company name Muhuk, WTF? CVyolla.com is creating accounts on your behalf to inflate their company portfolio. This is not just uncool, this is immoral. Shame on you CVyolla.com.

CVyolla.com Stealing My Identity

CVyolla.com Stealing My Identity

I have never signed up in your service, I have never accepted your terms of service. How impudent of you to think you can just create a mock account on my behalf and start sending stuff to my personal e-mail!

3. When Will Companies Learn Not To Reply With Stupid Anonymous E-mails

Despite things being clear enough, I wanted to hear the story from their side. Maybe there has been a mistake of some sort. Or maybe they would understand what they have been doing is wrong. I would be writing a completely different post today if they had just accepted both SPAMming and identity theft were wrong and assured me that they’d stop doing it. But, no. Instead they have sent me some nonsense reply. Before I get into the contents of this reply, there’s one very important issue with this reply.

Just as many other Internet companies, CVyolla.com was lacking the decency to reply my message with a real name and a real e-mail address. See, I am sending you with my real name, as a person, naturally I expect to communicate with a person. It is simply rude to reply your visitors/customers with a faceless nameless e-mail. If you are having difficulty to figure out how to configure your e-mails, drop me a line and I’ll try to help, seriously. Show some respect to your correspondents.

OK, back to the contents of CVyolla.com’s reply to my inquiry, faceless representative says:

  1. They have taken my e-mail address from my webpage2 or from a job listing3 or a public source such as an union or trade chamber4.
  2. They have sent me an e-mail telling me that I can opt-out before they started sending me SPAM.. erm, notifications.
  3. Since I haven’t opt out, they have decided that they can send their SPAM. But now upon my request they have frozen my account.

Let’s see;

  1. You probably found my e-mail address in an illegally collected list that you have bought. I seriously doubt you’d ever come read my blog and collect my e-mail address then. Anyway, regardless of how you found my e-mail address, you have no right to SPAM me.
  2. “Oh, we have given you an opt-out option” is just such a miserable, lame excuse it makes me throw up. Hell with your opt-out, where have you been the last eight years? It’s probably marked as SPAM instantly, and you would find that convenient, wouldn’t you?
  3. What account? I never signed up! It’s you deceiving yourself and those who entrusted their CV’s to you.

I wish CVyolla.com handled this a little better. If you don’t manage your online conversations professionally, or if you try the same management strategy with offline customer relations, you fail. If you SPAM, you fail. If you tell people crap like opt-out, you fail. If you make up accounts on other people/entities without their consent, you fail big time. I hope they correct these wrongs soon.

PS: Just as I was preparing to submit this post, I got another CV from CVyolla.com. So much from freezing my account upon my request, eh! Mega-fail, if you ask me.

1: Having a terrible memory, I though for a second, maybe I had signed up once and then I forgot about it. But that’s not the case, read on.

2: I don’t display this e-mail in my work site, it is only displayed in my personal site. Where there is no mention to work related stuff.

3: This e-mail is not mentioned in any job listing.

4: Again, it’s not listed in such places.

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Sad State of Web Development Industry in Türkiye

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

I met the founders of kariyerGENÇ last week. It is job search service for new graduates. During our conversation Sinan asked told me I should sign up too. I must say I’ve found it flattering that he considered me young. So I signed up. The service is built around the main value of building your CV online easily. OK, let’s build a CV. Aren’t CV’s fun.

I have edited and edited and edited… Finally, last section; proficiencies. Huh, which proficiencies could a new graduate possibly have? Let’s make it the last part.1 I scrolled through the dropdown of options to find Python and Django. No Python! Unsurprisingly no Django. But wait, the list doesn’t have Ruby, RoR, LISP either. But they included some programming languages I have never heard of; like HTML. What is this HTML programming language?

Basically I was left with the choices of Java and C. I couldn’t select them because neither is my main programming language. I can only select them after I select Python. So I left that section blank and sent them a contact form thing. It’s not cool not having an e-mail in your contact us section guys. If you are concerned about SPAM there are ways to evade e-mail harvesting bots. Please don’t be afraid of people who prefer using e-mail. I got a timely reply. From a nobody. Again, not cool. I am person and I’d like to communicate with another person. It’s OK to publish a generic e-mail on the site. But the reply should come from a employee e-mail and contain the employees name. I give you my name and e-mail when I contact you, right? You should have the decency to do the same when you reply.

Anyway, the reply I got was brief. In short it said “OK, we’ll do it.” Nice. Except they didn’t. I checked yesterday and they still had HTML programming language and not Python. Oh, well. So much for the orange ties. I deleted my account for the reason of being totally useless. It could be useful feedback if you asked why, when your users delete their accounts, you know?

In fact kariyerGENÇ is not doing it wrong. They’re just taking a picture of The Industry. The picture is correct, The Industry is doing it wrong. But that’s another topic for discussion2. What was disappointing for me was the lack of agile in kariyerGENÇ. I don’t mean agile methodology here, I mean agile technology. Technology and infrastructure that changes and adopts fast. For instance; how long would it take to make the change in a Django project? Yes, Django. The framework most people ignore or haven’t even heard of. You would just log-in the admin, add a new proficiency, save, optionally run a custom management command. 10 minutes at most.

It doesn’t matter much even if they add new proficiencies now. First of all a fixed list of options doesn’t work well where there are virtually unlimited possibilities. Second of all that dropdown is hideous, and increasing the number of options will only make it worse. Instead they should just let people tag themselves, WordPress style. Django-tagging does that automagically. You know, Django, the framework you don’t list in your proficiencies.

What Most People Agree On Is Not Necessarily The Best

The language for web development in Türkiye is PHP. Java is on the rise, in a couple of years it will be as popular as PHP. I am not kidding myself; these two and that horrible propriety thing that I don’t even want to name are industry standart in the world. But they also use other technologies. At least they experiment. At least they know that other alternatives exist. Here those minorities doesn’t even exist.

I frequently hear people saying “Python is a toy language“. Because for them there are serious, proper programming languages for grown-ups and serious, proper frameworks for grown-ups as Cal Henderson said …and everything else is a toy. You can’t use Python/Django for anything professional. Well, Markafoni did, with much success.

Think about it for a second; if what the majority have generally chosen the best, wouldn’t we live in a better society & environment than this? Just think about it.

Meanwhile I’ll be playing with my toys. :D

1: Actually kariyerGENÇ got it right here; in reality most of the new graduates have no proficiency. So, they’ll pick I know Word and Excel here even though they aren’t really proficient.

2: …and flame wars.

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What Youth Needs Is Vision

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

I received the following e-mail today:

gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!

Translation: Young people need Turkish articles. Why don’t you write in Turkish!

Let’s ask this as a question, or a more relevant question of why I am writing my blog in English, at the end of this post.

People Who Just Can’t Admit They’re Wrong

I am always shopping for new blogs for my RSS reader. Especially blogs written in Turkish. Not only because of Turkish is my mother tongue. But mainly because there are so few, you have to keep searching all the time. So far I’ve followed many blogs only to find out they’re by far and large not for me. Except for FZ Blogs of course, FZ rocks.

Then I’ve found this other blog, with FZ’s suggestion. It is in Turkish, check! tech/internet/programming related, check! Then I subscribed it happily. An article published today led to that e-mail in the beginning. It looked like an innocent article about Google Ventures until the final part.

Bir takım ahmakların dayattıkları genel fikir, halihazırda yurtdışında mevcut bir sistemi ne kadar çabuk kopyalayarak bir “.com” şirketi açarsanız o kadar başarılı olabileceğiniz yönünde. Bu senaryoda ileri teknoloji kullanımı, yaratıcılık, tasarım, özgünlük gibi unsurlar geri plana atılmış durumda.

Translation: Some fools are spreading the idea that the quicker you can duplicate an existing dotcom business the more successful you become. Advanced technologies, creativity, design and originality are neglected in this scenario.

Belli başlı, az sayıda ve sistemin çarpıklığından palazlanmış büyük oyuncu, etraflarına bazı çığırtkan ve spekülatif insanları toplayarak, kendi aralarında bir birlik oluşturmuşlar ve kendi aralarındaki rekabete rağmen, dışardan oyuna katılmak isteyenlere karşı düşmanca ve dışlayıcı bir tavır içindeler. Aslında bu primitif bir oyun, sektör var, oyuncular ve oyuncu olmayanlar var, oyuncular oyuna yeni oyuncu girmesini engellemek için işbirliği yaparken kendi aralarında da rekabet ediyorlar. Durum kabaca bundan ibaret.

Translation: Some big players, who had grown rich out of deformities of the system, gathering speculators and barkers around, formed an alliance, despite competition amongst themselves, to cast newcomers out. This is actually a simple game, there is the industry, players and non players, players are competing with each other while they cooperate to obstruct new players. This is roughly the situation

Naturally I asked if they could back that claim up. Are big players really trying to crush new startups? How exactly are they doing that?

I got no response to that comment, no big surprise. Instead I received the e-mail I mentioned in the beginning. Why? Because we love throwing mud at successful and not-so-successful1. Of course there’s no such secret allience between big players of Internet industry in Türkiye. At the very most they are (naturaly) protecting their investment. This is neither illegal nor immoral. If you actually have anything to support you claim Mr Consultant I’d be happy to read. Otherwise you should just admit you were wrong and fix that post.

Guilty Conscience

Just trying to move the conversation into private, shows that you have nothing meaningful to say about the evil secret cult of Internet companies. That’s not even an e-mail you have sent me. It is more like an IM message pasted in an e-mail composer.

gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!

Why don’t we pay the minimum attention to aviod being a situation where we end up being wrong. And more importantly why do we still insist even after we realize we are wrong. Say, if you give crack/warez links in your blog and then claim the software/media in question is public domain. And then when presentented with link to its official site where it is being sold (ie. not abandonware) you are supposed to try to make fun of people who did the warning? This is why I don’t, I can’t follow any Turkish bloggers.

Justification of stealing is bad for the person and bad for the community. Same is true with needless feces throwing and flaming corporate hatred.

Mr Consultant, I liked your blog. I want to follow it, I want to refer it to my friends, I want to learn something from it. So, please put some effort in when writing. I also like your web application yazboz.com a lot. It may be another duplicate of a well known class of applications you were bashing in your post2. But I like it. And I hope it becomes a big success.

Why Am I Torturing You With My Broken English?

The young needs Turkish information sources, eh? No! The young need to drag his sorry ass and learn English first. And then he should go read something of substance. And then if he has some time to kill he can read my blog. I am not an expert or guru or anything like that. I don’t have a mission or inclination to educate the young.

Trying to translate all the knowledge (written in English) on the Internet is absurdly, disproportionally more work than individually learning English, that it is plain stupid to even think about suggesting it.

I am writing in English for the following reasons:

  • It is a nice filter. If you are too lazy to learn enough English, I have nothing to say to you3.
  • Internet language is English4, insist on ignoring this fact and you will stay under-developed. On the contrary the more nationalistic you behave the more marginalized you get. If you are truly for technological advancement you can do nothing but to be pragmatic. Also I love and respect my languge. That is why I don’t butcher it trying to write technical stuff half English half Turkish.
  • In support of the first point; writing in English allows me to connect to a larger and better equipped community. So yes, instead of script kiddes who’ll never get past LAMP, I prefer a pythonista visiting my blog to at least get an idea of what kind of person I am.

If, for some odd reason, a young person were to listen to my advice, I’d like to repeat; learn decent English. Especially if you are a programmer. Get a book, a real book not one of those educational materials, and read it. It’s simple as that. Or all you’ll will be have to read is Mr. Consultant’s blog.

EDIT:
Author of mentioned post removed the second quote, about Internet investors, along with my comment there.

1: …and we love pissing contests. Just reply a question with another question, try to find the weak spot. look, I can piss further!

2: See the first quote.

3: This is of course in context of this Blog; mainly programming and programmers.

4: Arc supports only ASCII

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