Programmers should be trusted. If your brain surgeon told you the operation you need takes five hours, would you pressure him to do it in three?

-Scott Berkun

Happy Fathers Day!

Life does not come with a manual nor any simple instructions to guide you in life. But God packaged it with what they call a father.

I do not remember where I got this quote. Its not the exact quote but it comes close to it. In any case Happy Fathers Day!

We must kick the darkness until it bleeds daylight

 Got this from the Inquirer. It was one of the comments there. Darl posted this on our mailing list.

While the Philippine elections is far from being perfect, it is still by far the most peaceful mechanism guaranteed by our Constitution.

Every Filipino must assume a mindset that true and lasting change in our Philippine political system will not happen overnight. Real work lies in daily re-educating our masses towards nurturing lasting human values and convincing the great majority that effective, ethical, and informed leadership comes through advanced education, moral compass, human resource management, loyalty to the constitution, public decency, and an excellent record of public service.

Societal change cannot be left to our leaders anymore because they have become isolated by their own lust for power. I would love to see the day when election rallies will only be attended by the candidates and their official retinue because the people have become too wise and too discerning to smell the rats in their midst.

We have no more excuse as a people who desire change. We have to make the change happen ourselves within our own spheres of influence. Filipinos, we must admit, are long on criticism and political astuteness, but very short on making things happen for themselves and for those around them.

Just look at the way we live. We are used to being served by our household help. By extension, we leave all the work to our public servants. Why not work for the things that we can control ourselves such as obeying traffic laws, being honest in our with our taxes, lobbying for justice, caring for the sick, feeding the poor, living simply and within our means, keeping our gardens and surroundings clean, caring for the environment through composting and recycling, giving our tithes faithfully, sharing our goods to those who have none, using less gas by walking, biking, car pooling, etc.? The list is endless.

We cannot afford to be despondent for the sake of our future children. While we may not live to see the day when there will be significant change in our political and moral landscape, we can do our part by making this country better for the future generations.

In a sense, we are re-building our nation brick by heavy brick. The foreman may crack the whip and lash at our bare backs already scorched by the heat of despair. Worse, we sometimes take advantage of each other instead of working together to make things happen. If we fix our eyes on the vision with hope in our breasts, no evil empire on earth can squelch the flame of hope. As one favorite author wrote, “We must kick the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

-kumpasawit

Poetry and Software

Gabriel’s enthusiasm for the notion of programming as creative writing is not purely abstract; in the 1990s, he took three years off from his career to get an MFA in creative writing and to write a poem a day. He discovered that we ask more work of students who want to become writers and poets than those who aim to become software developers: They must study with mentors, they must present their work for regular criticism by peers in workshops, and they’re expected to labor over multiple revisions of the same work. “i think we need to be ashamed of this,” Gabriel says. “What we put forward as computer education is a farce.”

Got this paragraph from Scott Rosenberg’s Dreaming in Code. Richard Gabriel(who made the observation above) is a  Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and advocates Master of Fine Arts in Software.

The Tao of Warren Buffet

I was browsing some books in the bookstore when I stumbled upon the book The Tao of Warren Buffet. One of the quotes that caught my attention:

 Of the seven deadly sins, envy is the silliest, because if you have it, you don’t feel better. You feel worse. I’ve had some good times with gluttony……we won’t get into lust.

Much ado about strings

A good article I found from Slashdot telling the current problem with String theory. The problem is that String theory is becoming an “intellectual masturbation”*. The problem is that while hundreds of papers are being written on it, there is still no empirical proof of the theory.  It can’t be proven(can’t be disproven either) with the current technology that we have.

As a background, string theory is some sort of a bridge between Einstein’s general theory of relativity which governs the macroworld(planets, apples, oranges) and quantum mechanics which governs the microworld(photons, electrons etc). Physicist wants a unifying theory or a theory of everything which would govern the macro and microworld. Right now general theory of relativity can’t be used on small particles while quantum mechanics cannot be used on large objects.

String theory states that everything is made up of tiny vibrating strings. For string theory to be correct there has to be nine spatial dimensions. We are already familiar with the three spatial dimensions(height, width and length). The other spatial dimensions are curled-up so we don’t actually notice them.

What made the article a good read is the discussion on the relationship between truth, science and beauty. A quote from the article:

Or perhaps nature itself, at its most fundamental level, possesses an abstract beauty that a true theory is bound to mirror.

*Intellectual Masturbation -  I got this from one of my Math prof. He told us that most calculus problems are intellectual masturbation. It is pleasurable but not productive.

On Winning

Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing.

-Vince Lombardi

Here’s a challenge for you. Write a short description that tells someone how to tie bows in their shoelaces. Go on, try it!

I got this from the the book The Pragmatic Programmer. It is in the chapter The Specification Trap. The point of this chapter is that some things are better done than described. Sometimes it is better to do a mock-up or a prototype than drown the client with documents.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

From the book the curious incident of the dog in the night-time:

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your life thinking about them.