Some months ago Stephan Wissel pointed me to an article on Shu-Ha-Ri, which refers to Alistair Cockburn's Agile Software Development. It's well worth software developers being aware of the concept, because it is crucial to the developer's life journey.
Welcome to my new blog. It may seem a lot of effort to switch from one blog to another. But I've been working with Material for MKDocs for some years, thanks to Stephan Wissel, and it's a great framework for documentation. I've been aware of the blog plugin for some time, so it made sense to consider it as a good fit for the future.
It's been nearly five years since I joined HCL Labs, progressing currently to Associate Director - Research. In that time I've been involved in:
Those who were at Engage will have seen some of the experimentation I've been doing with AI in the context of VoltScript. In the OGS Jason demoed how I used it to provide code for a loop, correcting it with information about APIs specific to VoltScript. Before my VoltScript session, I showed two videos demonstrating how I've used AI to add value to the VoltScript coding experience, firstly by checking unit tests for code coverage and then by checking code complexity of functions in VoltScript Collections. These are code quality features that are provided out-of-the-box for more standard languages like JavaScript and Java, features that have long been on my wishlist for VoltScript, but features that will not be available in the near future. But GitHub Copilot filled a gap to provide the required information as a stop-gap.
No IT solution is delivered using code written solely by the solution provider. There is always dependent code written by a third party. Dependency management tooling has proliferated in every technology sector to support this. At the language level, this is handled by maven, gradle, npm etc. At the platform level, it’s handled by Homebrew on Mac and various options on Linux. At the DevOps level, it’s handled by Docker, Helm, etc.
And every solution includes an implicit assumption that the dependent code will continue to work as it does and provide whatever the consumer requires. For product offerings, this may be in the form of OEM agreements. For open source, it still exists, whether consumers are willing to admit it to themselves or not.
As I sit in the airport awaiting my flights back to the UK, I'm reflecting on a busy and eventful 10 days in Manila. For those not aware, in addition to some global members of the team, the bulk of the HCL Labs technical team are based in Manila in the Philippines. This was my first chance to meet the team in person, as well as my first chance since joining HCL to sit down with Stephan Wissel in person. Those who were at Collabsphere got a sneak peek at what the team has been working on. But with the start of 2020, it's time to ramp up planning for the user groups and factory tours this year, starting with Engage.
This week is going to be a big week for the HCL Digital Solutions brands and it started late last night with the announcement of the 2020 crop of HCL Mastershttps://www.cwpcollaboration.com/class_of_2020.html. Congratulations to all who were selected, it continues HCL's commitment to the community and those who go above and beyond to bring benefits to all who use the products.
After 14 and a half years at Intec, I'm moving on to pastures new. I've learned a lot and developed in ways that were never envisaged by anyone when I started at Intec. I'm very fortunate to have had a company that backed me, and I think we've both benefited greatly. But I've always sought to embrace opportunities and accept responsibilities throughout my career. And now is no different.
Earlier this week I had problems with high CPU utilisation and had to restart my PC. I took the opportunity to bite the bullet and install some Windows Updates. What I saw brought my mind back to UX and coding of applications. For at least five minutes, the progress displayed as "100% Complete". It prompted me to issue the following tweets:
Developers, progress bar should never show 100% complete. It should be 0% of next process or gone. Windows updates 100% complete for minutes
— Paul Withers (@PaulSWithers) 18 October 2016
I've been involved in developing training materials, tutorials, videos, online documentation and even books. So I've gained a full appreciation of the effort involved in not only creating good documentation but maintaining it too. Rene Winkelmeyer wrote a good blog post today about developer experience and his points are very valid.
Over the last couple of years I've seen a number of approaches as I've dug into a variety of new technologies.