Some Ships Leak from the Top

I marvel at those who have the ability to not speak. It is true, Information is Power, and the more you say the more power you give. I think salesmen know this, so knowing when not to speak and what not to say to them is key. The best know how to make you talk.

The first step is being comfortable with the uncomfortable silence. So easy to say, but so hard to do.

An Alternative to SLOC

Awhile ago I was sucked into development of a DoD proposal. One thing they wanted us to address was SLOC, or "Source Lines of Code". The idea is that they judge the level of software effort and complexity by the lines of code there are. There is a general consensus in the software world that this isn't the best idea. IE, if you write a function call like this

if (a==1)

{

_tprintf(_T("Status Report:\n")

_T("Hello!\n"));

}

Your SLOC will be much higher than if you wrote it like this.

if (a==1) _tprintf(_T("Status Report:\nHello!\n");

There are other arguments I agree on, such as smaller/simpler/efficient source code is better than bloated source code that achieves the same functionality.

I thought of an alternative on the drive in to work today that at least addresses the amount of new lines put in your coding standards. What if we looked noPublish Postt at the source code, but the size of the post-compiled binary machine code? In windows, this would be the size of all the EXEs and DLLs that comprise your application. Now granted, this would probably only be useful for uninterpreted languages (ie C/C++ and Assembly). You would also have to examine how much code is statically linked into your executable, so it doesn't get recounted. But at least your processess for assessment isn't based off of how often the development team hit the "enter" key.

A prediction...

Recently I have been watching the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs interview. It is interesting (a couple years later) to see how some of their technology prediction have panned out. Bill Gates has been (and is still) very excited about having a video/touchscreen interface on furniture surfaces around your house. I have always been skeptical of this; there is something old-timey and rustic feeling that makes non-office furniture appealing. I don't see the merging of technology and furniture being consumed by the masses. Steve Jobs was much less specific about what the next step of technology which is very consistent with Apple's secretiveness, and probably wise too.

Funny how while Bill Gates was touting the tablet as the tech device he would be carrying around in the future, Steve Jobs said nothing about tablets. Two years later, Apple releases the iPad. I wonder if Bill Gates will purchase one and carry it around as he predicted.

I'd like to offer a prediction after hearing a report today. I believe that cell phone providers will deprecate the model of selling phone-call minutes and sell only data plans. At first I thought the politics of the wireless industry would prevent this next vital step from happening any time soon. But after hearing how Verizon is allowing free minutes via Skype over their data plan, I now see how much wireless carriers are thinking outside of the box to stay competitive. This also comes amongst the iPad data-only plans.

I have more predictions too! But I will save them for future posts, so this post can ship.