2008 in retrospect
Overall, 2008 has been a busy and eventful year for me.
In 2007, I was working on a big change in my employer's multi-million-user software. In early 2008, this particular improvement went live for the first time. The software was used rather gently at first, but in a short time it went on to handle massive load spikes. It successfully served many millions of users during its first year in production.
In March of 2008, I attended the Software Development West conference in San Jose. Looking back, I was most impressed by Scott Meyer's “The Keyhole Problem” talk discussing unnecessary restrictions imposed in software. Visual keyholes include windows of fixed size that is smaller (or will eventually become smaller) than whatever is supposed to be shown in that window, or passwords that must be no longer than a given length. While these problems seem rather small and not that hard to work around and to fix, it is amazing how ubiquitous keyholes are in just about every kind of software. There are many keyholes in software beyond the interface, too. These restrictions cause significant damage every day, from basic annoyance and productivity losses to serious security breaches and heavy equipment malfunction. Scott Meyer's is working on a book discussing the problem.
I finally had my first encounter with the popular .Net platform. I took a course with Scott Reed of DevelopMentor in C#.Net fundamentals. Also joined San Diego .Net developers group and attended a series of workshops concentrating on the Windows Communication Framework.
In May, I participated in BarCamp in San Diego, presenting a talk on “The dark side of Agile”. Agile has become a fashionable buzzword, with a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon of Agile software development without much understanding of what they are getting themselves and their team into. The mess often ensues, people get upset and leave, organizations come to a near stand-still. As a result, Agile philosophy gets the blame for poor execution.
As part of the San Diego eXtreme Programming group, I presented in the Agile/XP track in the Southern California CodeCamp in San Diego. My presentation on switching to Agile led to a group discussion on Agile approach to adopting iterative development style. The conversation concentrated on simple, down-to-Earth steps that a developer or a development manager can take to become more Agile and more productive.
I moved to Central Texas in August, and joined a great Texas consulting company, Improving Enterprises. IE runs many community events in Texas, including a regular mini-BarCamp in the College Station/Bryan, TX area.
In the fall of 2008, I took Advanced Programming Techniques class taught by the inventor of C++ and one of greatest masters of Computer Science Dr. Stroustrup. The class discussed many fundamental topics that every software designer and creator should know and use, but amazingly few incorporate in their work: approach to architecture, interface design, premature and timely optimization, using and abusing patterns, handling parallel threads of execution.
In 2008 I joined the community of http://www.door64.com and started this blog. Happy New Year!
- Jane Prusakova's blog
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A Pretty Extraordinary Year!
A Pretty Extraordinary Year! First and foremost, my wife avoided any serious medical issues this year, making our lives a lot easier. Approaching our next decade with just the normal aches and pains, and complaints of the "Keeping up with the Jones'" housing market debacle interrupting our plans to move to a single story home to make it easier for her to engage in her painting and crafts works is in reality just a delay. Of course in 2008, I discovered the power of door64, and through it, my goal of establishing a business presence in Austin is in the process of being achieved (Matt's vision and personality is what makes it work so well). Along with that came the many new friends and acquaintances I have met who will no doubt be part of my circle for years to come. I note again that my oft' taken trip from home to either Stony Brook University or Brookhaven National Laboratory was approximately 60 miles and an hour + on good days, easily comparable to my run up I-35 to come to Austin (home garage to Congress Ave. has never been more than 1:20).
From a business perspective 2008 brought the continued frustration of my company's inability to close that elusive next round of funding that hopefully will finally come in 2009. But it is hard to complain about a year in which the company finally broke through by receiving a long awaited contract from the government for one of our technology clusters (began work in Nov. '07 and completed demos in Aug '08). It was a multi-task, remotely managed and geographically dispersed effort that we completed successfully (on-time, on-budget), and now will start one of what we hope will be multiple follow-on programs in 1Q'09. In May 2008, I was also lucky to have been selected to present a paper on my company's counterfeit detection solution at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security. June '08 brought with it the chance to take a course given by the Texas A&M Extension in the Department of Homeland Security approach to "Enhanced Threats and Risks Assessment" and I earned my certificate. In September '08 I was invited by a friend at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, Long Island, NY) to be the Keynote Speaker at their regional meeting of the Federal Laboratory Consortium on the subject of Small Business Issues and Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer. There have been a few disappointments, but on balance it was a good year.
As the end of the year draws near, my writing on subjects I care about at http://threatswatch.org continues (as unfortunately does the reason for writing them), it appears that my company will survive still another year and maybe thrive in the coming 12 months. I also expect that a number of personal and business goals and plans already in motion will come to a successful conclusion in 2009 as well.
On balance, 2008 has indeed been a pretty good year. It looks like 2009 is shaping up to being another one.
definitely sounds like you
definitely sounds like you had a very productive and fulfilling year.
Jane Prusakova
Software Architect & Developer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/prusakov
It's all about the encore.
It's all about the encore. "One in a row" doesn't really count. Right?
Sure, encore is
Sure, encore is important.
But "one in a row" is a whole lot better than none in a row.
Jane Prusakova
Software Architect & Developer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/prusakov
Following a series of
Following a series of none-in-a-rows with the first one-in-a-row requires and encore. But yes, one is better than another none. Once again, that nasty word "perspective."