Microsoft's Guest Lecturer

We had a guest lecturer from Microsoft in the last session of our Modern Methods in Software Engineering Course. It was interesting, the way they proudly present their methodology, and with no regret, confess that they have criteria like having a release in the specified time not to loose the market with price of covering up bugs and security holes just to make the release possible and leaving out quality and functionality and security issues; in brief, the fact that their priority in selecting features and and planning and everything is to maximize the profit! Well, after all they are a company with only one aim, making more money, and they were not any shy to announce that!

To be fair, I should mention that he showed us a neat pyramid shape one with security and quality and features and something else I forgot, on its sides and he said they try to extend the software while maintaining this shape balanced and everything, but eventually in the end, he confessed that everything is prioritized when having a release becomes more important than patching known bugs!

The issue of open source was also brought up at the end of his presentation by a question from the students and he calmly said they would be happy to move to open source _iff_ it would bring them more profit!

Interesting things for me to know were that they are using a tailored Agile method for most of their software development processes (e.g. for development of windows and office) and that Bill Gates is quite fund of the Cowboy Coding! It was also mentioned that Gates has recently handed over the position of chief software architect to a person (Ray Ozzie I think) who is much more process oriented, so the Microsoft guy was hopeful that they will see more practice of software engineering processes in Microsoft in the future.

BTW, KTH students can get a license for most of the MS software like Windows and Visual Studio etc. free of charge! That is while we are students.

Exams!

:-( ... and nothing else matters!

Good, Interesting, Useful!

- “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch”.

- “To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you”.

- “Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected”.

(From "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond)

Software Design

"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- Hoare, in The Emperor's Old Clothes

I'm studying software design at the moment. Every morning when I get up, I have to spend some 10 minutes convinceing myself that it is a good opportunity and not a "Total Waste of Time" and I learn some new (and not stupid) ways of thinking. I don't know why I disdane software engineering to this level. I was really hopeful that we would focus mostly on Agile Methods in our course, but beside a small part on XP, we still have some 600 pages of RAD and system and object design to study! :(

Purpose

"Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not!" -- Oscar Wild

Sitting in a bus station, next to my mother, I was watching people come and go in the streets of Stockholm Centralen. There were people of different age and origin and shape and size. There was a women with her baby, a Yong blond girl walking briskly and a middle aged, well dressed man, waiting for a taxi.

In a sudden rush of madness, I was just about to jump in the middle of the street and ask each of the people coming and going and waiting: What is your purpose in life! Why have you got up this Sunday morning dressed and walked out of your house. To what end and what future are you planning your lives....

Fortunately or unfortunately, my mother started talking and I was distracted and forgot about what I was to do. But what makes me afraid is that one of these days, this pressure inside is going to burst out in some sort of real madness. When is it going to happen, we shall wait and see...!