Ed Weissman's Blog, page 3
March 28, 2011
My Resume, Leonardo da Vinci Style
If it worked for Leonardo da Vinci, maybe it could work for me. The next time I'm looking for a job, I'll try this:
"Most Illustrious Proprietor, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled developers of applications of business, and that the invention and operation of the said programs are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Company, showing your Management my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.
1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong functions and modules, adapted to be most easily ftp'd, and with them you may pursue, and at any time combine them with others, secure and indestructible by standard mean time to failure of hardware and denial of service, easy and convenient to compile and catalog. Also methods of unzipping and storing the data of the customers.
2. I know how, when a website is besieged, to shard data onto the cloud, and make endless variety of mirrors, and fault tolerant disks and RAIDs, and other machines pertaining to such concerns.
3. If, by reason of the volume of the data, or the structure of the btrees and its indexes, it is impossible, when conducting a search, to avail oneself of sub-second response time, I have methods for benchmarking every process or other function, even if it were interpreted, etc.
4. Again, I have kinds of functions; most convenient and easy to ftp; and with these I can spawn lots of data almost resembling a torrent; and with the download of these cause great terror to the competitor, to his great detriment and confusion.
5. And if the processing should be on the desktop I have apps of many machines most efficient for data entry and reporting; and utilities which will satisfy the needs of the most demanding customers and users and consumers.
6. I have means by secret and tortuous scripts and modules, made without leaving tracks, to generate source code, even if it were needed to run on a client or a server.
7. I will make secure firewalls, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the hackers with their utilities, there is no body of crackers so great but they would break them. And behind these, software could run quite unhurt and without any hindrance.
8. In case of need I will make big properties, methods, and collections and useful forms, out of the common type.
9. Where the operation of compiling might fail, I would contrive scripts, functions, routines, and other parameter driven processes of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of data entry, reporting, and storage.
10. In times of low revenue I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in maintenance and the refactoring of code public and private; and in guiding data from one warehouse to another.
11. I can carry out code in Javascript, PHP, or C, and also I can do in network administration whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
Again, the intranet app may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of all your customers of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Google.
And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your data center, or in whatever place may please your Businessperson - to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc."
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This is one of the 256 entries in my new ebook, "The Best of edw519". Check it out at http://www.scribd.com/doc/52729281/The-Best-Of-edw519
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This was a response to Marc Cenedella's great post about Leonardo da Vinci's resume:
http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-resume/
February 18, 2011
edw519 Toasts Technology
edw519 joined Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco's CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech Chairman Art Levinson; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; former state controller and venture capitalist Steve Westly Doerr, Stanford University President John Hennessy, and President Obama at the home of Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr.
November 14, 2010
2 Ways of Looking at Old Code
There are two ways to looking at old code: "I can't believe I wrote this code" and "I can't believe I wrote this code."
I recently tabled a small module for about a month. I came back to it and had trouble remembering what I was trying to do. Why did I name my variables that way? What was the point of this function? How could this ever work? If anyone else had ever seen that code, I would have just crawled into a hole and died. OTOH, I recently wanted to build a new UI gadget in javascript and remembered once writing something similar in VB years ago. As I went through that code, I thought, "This is really clever! Was I really that smart back then? Why haven't I written anything this cool lately? Am I losing it?" (The answer for me and everybody else is, "If you did it once, you can always do it again.) Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896338November 13, 2010
How to close a sale?
Ask your customer, not us.
I'm not trying to be abrupt, but it sounds like you've already done all the right things and your relationship with your customer should have reached the point where you can ask them exactly this question. Dealing with institutions can be it's own animal. The best way to learn how their buying process works is to ask them! In a perfect world, you may still be 6 months away from a sale. You wouldn't agonize over it if you knew, and you'd know if you asked. In dealing with institutional customers, I even take it a step further. Before I invest any time in the sales cycle, I have them teach me what it takes to get a sale, exactly what I have to do, and how long it will take. Real buyers will be happy to tell you all of this; in fact, they may think you're sales amateurs if you don't bother to ask. Lots of times the buyer may be frustrated by their own organization and will coach you to be more successful so that they can get what they want. There are millions of potential tips: "You have to talk to Joe Smith first." "Never call Fred on Monday." If you filled out Form XG7-B first, you'll save 6 weeks." "Mary only buys from people she meets through Bill or her Business Group." "You have to be a preferred vendor of XYZ.." I hope you get the picture. Like I said, it sounds like you've done all the right things so far. No one here at hn knows what else you need to do. Your customer does. Ask them. Today.Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897543November 12, 2010
The 3 Programming Languages you need to Know
Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
1960s:Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: Assembly
Bread and Butter: COBOL
1970s:
Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: FORTRAN
Bread and Butter: BASIC 1980s:
Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: C
Bread and Butter: QBasic 1990s:
Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: C++
Bread and Butter: Visual Basic
2000s:
Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: C#
Bread and Butter: PHP 2010s:
Happiness Language: Lisp
Hack-it-out Language: Python
Bread and Butter: RubyOriginal thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1893000
November 11, 2010
Dear Mom and Dad
Nice, but still waaay too technical for my mom and dad...
Dear Dad,My customers are small business people (retailers, wholesales, doctors, lawyers, etc.) who own computers that have replaced their file cabinets and some of their clerical employees. Those computers came with lots of stuff in them but need more as their business changes or they discover stuff they forgot. I upgrade their computers with the stuff they need. We call that stuff "software". They pay me. Well enough for me to buy you dinner Sunday night and take you to the Steeler's game. What do you say? Love, EddieDear Mom,I sit in an office writing all day long. I have a fridge and a microwave and occasionally go out to lunch with people down the hall. When it gets cold I wear the sweater you bought me last month. I love what I do. I write stuff, kinda like Stephen King or Danielle Steele, but business stuff, not fiction. My customers love what I write for them and they pay me well, so you never have to worry about me again. I showed Uncle Lenny what I was working on and he thought it was great. I'll pick you up for lunch and a trip to the mall at noon on Saturday. See you then. Love, EddieOriginal thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891310November 10, 2010
Memo to Start-ups: You're Supposed to Be Changing the World, Remember?
Investor: What are you building?
Entrepreneur: Artificially intelligent software that automatically builds sophisticated business applications based on the enterprise's business rules.Investor: Your competitors are too entrenched. What can you do that's simpler? Entrepreneur: Small business software that ties all a company's applications together.Investor: You'll never compete with Microsoft. What else?Entrepreneur: Tiny apps that all kinds of people can use to run their stuff. Investor: 37signals will kill you. What else?Entrepreneur: Social software that enables your sales people to understand what's happening in the global marketplace.Investor: It'll never work. Can you do something more practical? Entrepreneur: An intelligent e-commerce system that guarantees the consumer the best value.Investor: You'll never compete with Amazon or Ebay. Got any other ideas?Entrepreneur: Recipe software. Investor: OK, if that's the best you can do, we'll go with it. Geez, I just wish you guys would dream a little bigger.Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829189Ed Weissman's Blog
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