Caffeinated Coder

I did a Technorati Vanity Check yesterday and noticed the following link: ผู้เชี่ยวชาญเกิดจากอะไร

Staying true to my culturally oblivious American (technically United Statesian) roots, I took some wild guesses and placed the language somewhere in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, I was not even close. It turned out to be a direct translation of one of my recent posts into Thai that was done by chatchai chailuecha, an Engineer from Bangkok.

I hate to admit it, but I was blissfully unaware that there was actually a language called Thai despite the fact that it is spoken by over 60 million people. Again, that should not surprise anyone. The rest of the world likely has such low expectations of us Am’Ricans that they are probably just grateful that I am able to speak English at all or that I even know the name of the language I speak.

On a side note, you may ask why poor misguided blogger from Thailand would choose to translate my post into Thai in the first place? Good question. I can only assume that some of the words got garbled in the translation and he accidentally mistook it for something of interest.

Anyways, after seeing this esoteric link, my first inclination was to do a theme post and provide my own translation of said post in a truly obscure language. This also should not surprise you since I am a shameless blog whore, as Raoul, a co-worker of mine who is well-known for his tact is fond of pointing out.

I am not really a huge fan of Star Trek, but I like to think of myself as a self-respecting geek so naturally chose Klingon.

At first, I was sorely disappointed in the sad state of Klingon translation software. At most I only got a few words of my post to translate into this highly revered fictitious language. I was starting to think that maybe geeks actually had better sense than I had given them credit for and didn’t spend nearly as much time on this as I had assumed.

That’s when I stumbled upon the Klingon Translation Bible Project.

I kid you not. Someone is actually putting a good faith effort into translating the entire Bible into Klingon. Here is what the Book of Ruth looks like in Klingon in case you don’t believe me. I’ll pause to let that sink in.

…still pausing…

I’m not sure of what the official population of Klingons is, but I’m pretty sure that it is less than 65 million. It seems to me that the good people of Thailand would be disturbed by this knowledge.

In fact, I’m almost positive that there is no good way to spin this to the rest of the world. At least before we could fall back on the excuse that we were linguistically retarded or just plain lazy. Now everyone will know that the real reason we struggle with one language when nearly everyone else in the world is multi-lingual is that we just plain don’t want to talk to them.

Damn you Klingons!

Don’t take it personally, world. There’s not very many people I really want to talk to in my own country either.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to watch a stand-up comedy routine filmed in infrared? If you haven’t already watched Rory’s creepy YouTube Thanksgiving tribute to spiders and pretentious amateur film-makers, then grab yourself a set of ear-phones and get ready for ten minutes of well-edited and quirky hilarity. I particularly liked his spirited impression of spiders and his dire warning against abusing mouth wash towards the end.

Warning, if you watch this video, then you’ll probably want to find yourself a securely fitting mouth net before going to bed tonight.

For an added video bonus, check out this spoof on 24 that explores what the my once favorite show might have looked like if it took place in the golden era of internet technology that was 1994. Many thanks to Rob for sharing this gem.

I just read the Silent Majority post by Paul Vick, which challenges conventional wisdom by offering some evidence that VB.NET is more popular than C#. The VB.NET vs C# flame war that ensued in the comment section led me to the following thoughts.

1. The difference between these languages truly is trivial. The recruiters I talked to a few months ago when I was switching jobs from a VB.NET to a C# shop looked more than a little skeptical when I told them that I was just as qualified for a C# position as I was for a VB.NET position. It turns out I was right. It really only did take a few days before I felt as fluent in C# as I did in VB.NET. By scanning a Cheat Sheet and making occasional use of Reflector or a converter, you should literally be able to pick up the other language in a matter of hours. Ninety percent of programming these days has been abstracted to the base class libraries and there just aren’t that many keywords in a programming language to have to relearn.

2. Despite having spent most of my programming career in VB.NET, I now have a clear preference for C#. This is purely subjective, but I really value conciseness. Anything that gives me fewer words to type or scan with my eyes is preferable and it is just painful for me now to go back and see all those gratuitous Dim…As, End, and OverloadsThat being said, there are a few things I miss about VB.NET. The biggest one is actually a compiler rather than a language issue. I liked the immediate feedback from background compilation and haven’t quite figured out why the C# compiler never included it. I also find myself missing the syntactic sugar of The Handles keyword for declarative wiring of events to functions and the With keyword for using the same object repeatedly.

I definitely don’t miss either of these features enough to want to go back to VB.NET and they are pretty trivial when compared to a language feature like anonymous delegates, which C# has and VB.NET doesn’t, but I still liked them.

3. If you think the VB/C# debate is still important, then you are seriously out of touch. I find it hard to fathom how someone could possibly get excited about curly braces and dim statements when the rest of the world is busy discussing the inherent weaknesses of strongly typed OO languages when it comes to issues like concurrency and meta-programming.

For all you VB/C# holy warrior relics, may I suggest the following:

Instead of ardently trying to convert your fellow .NET developer to your side of this otherwise trivial language debate, why not join forces and start questioning whether the next versions of either language will be able to compete with dynamic languages like Ruby when it comes to productivity or functional languages like Erlang when it comes to effectively scaling out .NET applications in a multi-core future?

Just a thought.

Don’t get excited. This is not a geek version of the “Birds and the Bees” talk.

I just finished reading another excellent scientific paper called The Expert Mind, which I discovered through one of Jean-Paul Boodhoo’s posts. The article examines the question of whether experts are born or made and offers some interesting insights into what it means to be an expert and the best ways to become one.

As you probably guessed from my recent “Is that Juice On Your Face?” post, I am fascinated by the question of competence and what leads some people to attain it while others, like the Juice Bank Robber, …well…er…don’t attain it. I often marvel at how some developers who are relatively inexperienced and have only average intelligence are able to attain a high level of knowledge and expertise that surpasses battle-worn industry veterans and off-the-chart mensa types. This article not only attempts to explain this mystery, but it does so through one of my favorite hobbies, Chess.

If you’ve ever seen exhibitions by Grand-Masters who play against scores of opponents simultaneously while blind-folded, it is easy to dismiss such people as talented freaks of nature with computer-like powers of analysis and photographic memories rather than view them as merely experts in their field who have trained themselves through long and intense study.

However, recent studies show that chess masters have only average abilities when it comes to memory and visual-spatial analysis. For example, despite having almost perfect recall for board positions related to actual games, the recall of grand masters turned out to be no better than average players when the pieces were arranged randomly on the board in unrealistic scenarios.

Based on evidence like this, the authors conclude that experts rely not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge, which takes an enormous amount of time and effort to attain. What appears to make much more difference than experience or talent is what the authors call “effortful study”, which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence.

It turns out that what differentiates an expert from a novice isn’t that experts alone know how to engage in effortful study, but it is that experts continue to utilize this technique long after a novice stops.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam–most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

Thus it appears that motivation is a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise. If you truly want to become an expert, then you have to resist the pull of complacency and constantly approach your field with the same passion, curiosity, and effortful study that you did when you first started.

So if being an expert appeals to you (which it probably does if you’re bothering to read professional blogs), then you have to start by asking yourself one question. Can you honestly say that you are still improving rapidly because you approach software development with “effortful study” or is your progress occurring at a snail’s pace because you are stuck in that complacent stage?

I’d like to introduce you to Sophia, future developer and blogger extraordinaire. She’s only 22 weeks old, but as you can clearly tell from this picture she is very precocious. When I mentioned I was downloading Visual Studio 2008 tonight, she was so excited that she kicked and startled her Mommy. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my first attempt at installing it failed.

While waiting for Sophia to be born, I’ve taken it upon myself to learn a few interesting facts about pregnancy. Here’s what I’ve gleaned so far:

1. Women’s brains actually shrink by 3-5% during pregnancy (it returns to normal size within 6 months after giving birth).
   
2. Women don’t seem to appreciate being reminded about this fact. For example, saying “You probably just said that because your brain is shrinking” is not likely to receive a favorable reaction.
3. Despite the extra weight, pregnant women can still move surprisingly fast and punch extremely hard.

Besides getting Sophia’s room ready, my one goal for the next 18 weeks is to teach Sophia how to do the footprint trick. I think it would be great fun at parties. Unfortunately, her mom doesn’t share my enthusiasm for this endeavor.

A psychology study entitled Unskilled And Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Leads To Inflated Self-Assessments opens with the following amusing anecdote:

In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks
and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at
disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after
videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras were broadcast
on the 11 o’clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance
tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. “But I wore the
juice,” he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the
impression that rubbing one’s face with lemon juice rendered it
invisible to videotape cameras (Fuocco, 1996).

The paper then goes on to describe the results of four studies which led researchers to conclude the following:

1. Incompetent people will tend to grossly overestimate their skills and abilities. A part of the study, the subjects were given various tests and then asked to predict their scores and relative rankings. People in the bottom quartile overestimated their performance by an average of 45-50% while people in the top quartile actually underestimated their skills.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to gain insight into their own incompetence by observing the behavior of other people. After being allowed to review the test results of their peers, the estimates of the bottom quartile actually worsened while the estimates of the top quartile improved. This led researches to conclude that the mis-calibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the mis-calibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.
3. The way to make incompetent individuals realize their own incompetence is to make them competent. In the last study, researches found that the estimation skills of the bottom quartile dramatically improved if they were given training in the domain knowledge of the test. Not only did their scores improve, but they finally became aware of their short-comings relative to their peers and revised their prior estimates downward.

This leads me to the following thoughts:

If you really did have juice on your face, you’re probably wouldn’t know it. This is a sobering thought. As Darwin said, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge“. In other words, if you are feeling particularly confident, then it is a good sign that you have some more learning to do.

The best way to ensure there is not juice on your face is to constantly seek feedback and learn: I like to think of this as a Continuous Integration for the mind. In order to become competent, I need to constantly feed new ideas and skills to my mental compiler and then unit-test them through rigorous community and peer feedback.

As a side observation, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the rigor with which these studies were conducted. It made me realize that there is a close correlation between proving a scientific hypothesis and debugging software. It is one thing to think you know the cause of an observed phenomena or an erratic, opaque bug, but it takes carefully planned and executed tests in order to adequately prove it.

This week I installed a few nifty Firefox Add-Ons, All-In-One-Gestures and IE Tab.

I tried All-In-One-Gestures after watching how fast a co-worker was able to navigate on the web by using this Add-On. It allows you to right-click anywhere on a web page and move the mouse left to go backward or right to go for forward.

Navigating this way is definitely much faster than using the browser toolbar buttons and helps me stay in a better flow when trying to quickly scan oodles of google results.

For some reason I also really like the little red line affect that shows up on the page, but I’m easily impressed like that.

The other Add-On, IE Tab, lets you view how a web page will be displayed in Internet Explorer by simply clicking on a button at the bottom of the page. This came in handy when I was trying to figure out why a Cruise Control report generated by FxCop was not working. On a hunch, I toggled to IE and realized that the XSL had browser compatibility issues because it worked fine in IE. It was nice to be able to verify this by simply toggling view modes rather than having to start a different browser and then navigate to the page.

The moral of the story: Always pay attention to how your co-workers do things. I don’t think I ever met somebody who didn’t have at least one time saving tool or trick up their sleeves that I could steal to my great benefit. I like to think of every productivity enhancing tool or technique as a little investment. It may take a little “seed money” in terms of time and effort, but it is amazing how quickly the dividends begin to pay off so that my overall time savings quickly surpasses my initial investment.

Really, it’s not that hard! If the idea is remotely appealing to you, then I recommend that you throw caution to the wind and just commit to doing it. There are thousands of people who do it all the time that are fatter, lazier, slower, older, and saner than you’ll ever be. You may actually enjoy it and decide to do several. At the very least, you’ll probably feel better about yourself when you finally cross the finish line.

Ok, enough with the pep talk, here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Get a good pair of running shoes - I can’t emphasize this enough. The number one reason people fail on the quest to run a marathon is injury and the best way to prevent injury is to get a good pair of shoes that fit properly. Find a store that specializes in selling running shoes. If the clerks are any good, then they will watch you walk and have you try on several different types of shoes in order to find one that properly compensates for your idiosyncracies (i.e. size of your arch and whether or not you overpronate when you walk). If you live in the KC area, then I highly recommend Elite Feet. You should be able to get something good for $100 that will last you through your marathon training schedule. Remember, running shoes are only good for 400 miles, so throw out your old ones if you bought them several years ago.
   
2. Find a good training plan and stick to it - The less experience you have running, then the longer the training schedule should be. Unless you’ve been running for a long time, I recommend a program that is at least 6 months. The second most common cause of injury is trying to increase mileage too quickly. Even if you feel fine, you need to give your body time to adjust to the weekly mileage increase or you will get injured. If your shins start to hurt, then that is a sign that you should slow it down and stretch out the training schedule longer.
3. Cross train - Another great way to prevent injury and improve your running is to randomly substitute short runs on your training schedule with swimming, biking, or weight lifting. If I find myself dreading a work out or starting to feel pain when running, then I try to switch to a different activity for a few days.
   
4. Find running partners - Running is actually a great social activity. Longer runs should be done at a slow enough pace so that you can comfortably talk while you run. Committing to meeting someone else is a great motivator to keep you on your schedule. It also helps the miles go by a lot faster.
   
5. Don’t forget nutrition - It is important to get fuel up before during and after a run. If I’m running longer than 8 miles, then I take Power Gel or Gu with me and take one after every hour of running to help refuel. I almost always notice an extra spring in my step within 5 minutes of taking the Gel. I also try to have a protein shake right after a run in order to speed up the recovery time.
   
6. Alternate walking and running - It is NOT cheating to walk! I recommend alternating as much as necessary between walking and running when you first start out. The important part is that your legs put in the miles. At various times I’ve experimented with taking 2 minute walking breaks after every ten minutes of running and I find that my overall time is just as fast and that I feel much less tired and sore afterwards. Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly tired or unmotivated, then I’ll just start out walking for as long as it takes my body to warm up or my mind to get bored.
   
7. Never underestimate your mind and body’s ability to adjust - Inevitably, you will finish a relatively short run feeling utterly exhausted and certain that you couldn’t have run another step. Resist the urge to do the math in your head or you will seriously psyche yourself out. As long as you only increase your long runs by a mile or so a week, then your body and mind will adjust and one day you will suddenly catch yourself thinking “whew, I’m glad I only have to run eight miles today”. You will laugh at the absurdity of the statement, yet it will seem true. It is all relative.
   

What are you waiting for? Here is a training schedule. The only thing that is left to do is to use the Race Finder on runnersworld to pick out a race 6 months. I recommend picking one in a city you’ve always wanted to visit and make a nice 3-4 day mini-vacation out of it.

Good luck! Look me up if you are ever in the KC area and want to go for a run.

…he’d definitely want in on some of this action.

I clipped some quotes from the comment section of a recent post by a popular blogger. See if you can guess the blogger’s identity and topic of the post based on the comments below.

• Commenter: I think you weren’t hugged enough as a child.
• Blogger: I think you lost your virginity to an uncle.
• Commenter: codeeliterer.com is still open for you to start your own pseudo-intellectual negativity community.
• Blogger: Oh aren’t you the clever little anonymous blog coward.
• Commenter: ……he inspires, you turn people off and come off as miserable.
• Blogger: Take another handful of blue pills and go back to sleep…Now go away and let the grown-ups handle the grown-up stuff. You’ll be of age soon enough and then you can carry the fight.
  
• Commenter: Honestly I think this negative outlook will discourage people from finding their passion and running with it.
• Blogger: I’m all for discouraging people from running with scissors.
• Commenter: Is there a specific person you are referring to?
  
• Blogger: Dude, this isn’t Survivor. If you’re addicted to over-dramatized bitch-on-bitch slap fests, pop yourself some corn and sit yourself in front of the other glowing screen. I’m not here to satisfy the blood lust that you’ve allowed to take hold of you through lack of diligence and discipline.
• Commenter: Finally you just came out and said it. You’re gold, we’re all shit. We get it.
• Blogger: …your say is transparently not much more than a mano-a-mano, craven attack from an anonymous lurker.
• Commenter: Douchebag…Can we get a feed that excludes
  “Look at me, I’m controversial and I have something to SAY!” rants? We get it. You’re special. Conformity is bad. Nothing that comes from a large corporation is good. Very clever…Do you think that you’d have many readers if you left
  .com and went out on your own?
• Blogger: If I could get rid of neolithic commentary like this as a result, it might be worth it.

Was anyone able to guess the topic of the post? I would tell you, but I can’t actually remember anymore. I was too busy being entertained by “Yo mamma’s so ugly” contest going on. I vaguely remember there being some good points thrown in there between the flying chairs though, so if you’re interested you can check it out here.

You have to give it to the Scott though… he has a certain flair and sense of creativity when it comes to the game of insults. It probably helps that he gets so much practice.

If you’re not a regular reader of Rory Blythe’s blog, then you may have missed his recent Neopolean Creation Story series of posts.

Here are some questions to help you decide if you are ready for the experience:

• Are you a fan of Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian”?
  
• Have you ever found yourself bemoaning the fact that last three page blog post you read was too short?
  
• Have you ever wondered what happens to a blogger when they suddenly find themselves with a lot of free time on their hands?
• Have you ever used the words “back-stabbing”, “opportunistic”, or “duplicitous” to describe a sandwich?

If the answer was yes to these questions and you are in the mood for a slightly surreal but definitely funny reading experience, then I recommend checking out the first four days of Rory’s Seven Day Creation Story.

Still not sure? Here are a few random quotes to whet your appetite.

Day One

• “I kicked Jerry [the Sycophant] right through the goal posts of Death, and watched as My first creation was undone. I saw that Death would make a good wastebasket for My first few tries at creating living things, and I thought it was good.”
• “I didn’t really know what I was doing. Creationism doesn’t come with a manual. I had screwed up on My second Jerry…and I suddenly had a sandwich to look after. It was demoralizing…”

Day Two

• “I got up a bit late on the second day. I knew this because I had created Time on the first day. It had been causing Me grief ever since.”
• “Yes, sandwich… Yes. I shall create a thing to separate work from Home, and the thing I create, It shall be called the World.”

Day Three

• “I looked back again to see if I could talk the bear out of trying to eat My nose, but it was totally unnecessary…sandwich had already made it to the back of the cage, domesticated the bear, trained it to effect the appearance of anger for the purpose of motivating the giraffe rather than actually trying to bite noses…”
• “All the running around that day was starting to wear Me out. I dare say I was getting irritable, but I kept My cool because, as God, it was important to My creations that I lead them and fill them with confidence. Still, the pressure was getting to Me. I counted to ten and made a mental note to invent Yoga sometime.”
• “The workers hoisted sandwich up on their shoulders and paraded him around, eventually marching off into the sunset in a cloud of dust and happiness.”

Day Four

• “My world came crashing down because of a device French people clean their bottoms with.”
• “I was beginning to think that the whole event had been a sign from me. The message was that, even if sandwich doesn’t come home, and even if you burn Home to the ground because of a bomb/bidet mix-up, that from the smoking cinders and obsidiate slag, one can find hope in an obstinate, indestructible, and totally inedible breakfast food.”
• “No need for any hard feelings, as long as somebody could provide a satisfactory explanation for this *** nightmare of a how-do-you-do perpetrated by an opportunistic backstabbing duplicitous sandwich.”
• “I thought, God help us, but then I remembered that God was a very bad sandwich, and I knew… I knew that the only hope this world had was a deposed god dressed in drag with vomit on his face, a hangover, Glop in a papoose on his back, and his vehicle, a chariot that was literally fueled by adrenaline….Ok. That was terrifying, too.”

Disclaimer: I hereby relinquish all responsibility for any psychological damage that may occur as a result of reading his blog.

* If you want some more background into the origin of this series, check out the post, A New Religion - A Neopolean Religion.