I go off and leave the slashdot crowd for a few months and I come back to this? What gives? Now journal entries can be stories? Man I have been gone a long time...

So lately I've noticed at work the biggest problems we have have nothing at all to do with technology and everything todo with the definition of terms. In otherwords end users are arguing semantics with each other. Now I don't want to be anti-semantic but I really think that this is one of those places where a little language and a few definitions could help out.

the smell of intoxicating cheese.

The most valuable thing in the whole world is credibility because once you've lost it you can't get it back.

Or wait, is that something else? Well, now you've read it and you can't un-read it!

My education in the wilds of Alaska was not a typical American education.

NPR is running a series on American High Schools. So far the most scathing bit is on American High Schools failing to teach logical and critical thinking skills. As an Engineer, I use critical thinking skills daily. I isolate problems, formulate hypothesis, test them and decide on which hypothesis is correct or not.

Each time through this cycle I get closer to a solution to my assigned problem. Each trial gets me closer to the truth. Without this skill I would be unable to function. If I have ever had difficulty working with anyone it has been over the ability or inability to accept this method as a realistic means of working.

If you say something is better, you'd better be able to prove it. That's my official stance. In adult life all of my conflicts have been over this one issue... proof. Can you prove that claim? Is your proof sound?

Many times I've worked with people who find those two charges offensive. They are offended that I would question a claim or proof... that I would test another professional's assertions. This is sometimes read as arrogance. It is not. I expect my same assertions to be tested in the same light. I do not expect to make a claim and have that claim merely accepted because I said so. The experiment, the test, the proof are what separate engineering and science from religion, faith, and magic.

To me the idea that these concept is missing from modern American schools explains a great many things. For one thing, I do not have a typical "American" education. My education was heavily supplimented by my father. He was a field biologist and taught me from the age of ten how to collect samples, observe, and make notes like our naturalist fore-runners. By Junior High he had taught me how to have a control group in my experiments. He also taught me how to isolate an experimental variable.

He also taught me to think critically. To question and verify claims. He taught me how to use a lab and lab equipment. All this I learned from my father. He was the one that taught me to maintain mental rigor.

My mother taught me faith and religion and to love learning. She is the one who taught me art and meditation. She gave me the tools to know awe.

My education in the wilds of Alaska was not a typical American education. My parents educated me. It seems that the modern American is not educated by their parents. It seems to me that they are dropped off at school and forgotten.

If there is a problem with modern American education it is in the communication of culture. It's the teaching of rigor and awe that's missing. How do we fix this? How can we replace the role of parents? Should we do it?

An interesting personal dynamic. If I offend you and must be careful to not offend you... you have essentially restricted my behavior. However, if you don't offend me and virtually nothing you could do offends me... you have unrestricted behavior. The result is that we are not equals, I must be cautious of you and obey your rules while you are not required to have reguard for me in the same light.

I think there's a reason I like working with computers better than working with people.

http://lwn.net/2000/0914/a/lt-debugger.php3

I stumbled on this link which contains a rant about debuggers supposedly posted by Linux Torvalds. The rant nicely summarizes why some people dislike debuggers and why some people want them. I have to admit that I don't like debuggers for the same reason as Torvalds is quoted for not liking them: "Without a debugger, you tend to think about problems another way. You want to understand things on a different _level_."

However, the really nice debugger in my JBoss IDE has saved my bacon a few times.

...it is that I am never satisfied.

How does one make certain that they are the inexhaustible fount of knowledge? Perhaps it is by always learning, and always teaching. But how does one "stay ahead" is it by learning three things and teaching one? Or is knowledge a different game. Maybe knowledge isn't zero-sum... maybe it is inexhaustable.

And, why would one want to be the inexhaustable fount of knowledge anyway? Isn't humble student better?

Remember my journal entry a few days back? I've been working with the Ex-CTO a few days now and I thought I'd share a few of our lessons with you.

• Just because something compiles right doesn't mean it is fixed.
• SQL uses "--" for comments
• In general try to adhere to the style guide for the language.
• You should have been provided with a list of requirements. If you code fills these new requirements and does not break the old requirements... then your code works! If you break old features, your code does not fill its requirements, or your code produces unintended side effects... your code DOES NOT work.

And that's what I have taught him these last two weeks. What he has taught me is immeasurable... mainly because I can't find it to measure it.

I'm thinking of writing a book called "Evil Anti-Patterns" and describe things I've seen in code. Things that would belong on http://thedailywtf.com/

Not all that surprizingly I see a lot of misuse of terminology in my work in the IT feild. I occasionally work with people who insist on mis-using a term. This time the term was 4GL.

The argument was over "real" 4GL languages and how MySQL didn't provide one. I mentioned that SQL was technically a 4GL and that MySQL provided that. The response, "How can it be 4GL it's not even procedural?" It turns out that 4GLs are by definition non-procedural.

After 25 years working with databases I'm sure they just forgot.

If you do not continually upgrade your skills you are doomed.

So we've hired a temp Software Engineer to help me out over the summer. Now, I was expecting since this was a summer gig and this is the "Research Triangle Park" area that I would be interviewing college kids... sounds funny to call them college kids I'm not that much older myself... but instead our three month gig has been filled by the EX-CTO of the Duke University. He's spent the last six years doing eCommerce and web work in Perl since leaving the University.

<farnsworth>Ba-wha?</farnsworth>

Yes kiddies, when he applied for the job could I realistically say... no, no, no, not qualified. Yet I can't escape the feeling I just agreed to hire my boss. The guy is supposed to be the SE1 to my "Senior Software Engineer" WTF is that? He is horribly over qualified for the job. Terrifyingly so.

It is a temp gig or I'd be much more perturbed. Still... this feels wrong somehow. Apparently I'm the only one bothered by this. Should I be looking for another job now?

Any tips?