Why would one consider a programming language in the same area as human language? Is it just a trick to make a CV stand out or are these languages essentially the same? How can you find a common denominator to indicate fluency in these languages? Do you read, write and speak C# as well as your native language?

Looking at a definition of language: "a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols". Pretty obvious, that does entail both human and programming languages. Still, it somehow doesn’t feel right to think in the same way about human and programming languages.

On human language we often split up our knowledge in 3 areas: reading, writing and speaking. Where reading is the ability to understand text, writing the ability to create text for others to understand and speaking the rapid fire combination of the other 2 abilities.

Maybe if we translate that to programming languages, reading would become the ability to filter out the logic from a piece of code and see the underlying architecture and patterns. Writing could maybe translate to the ability to create code using a base set of functionality from the language, much like most junior developers produce code. Speaking in the end should be what someone more senior does. To know and understand the strength and weakness of a language, the standard interfaces and how/where to use them.

But still, I’d argue to keep them separate on your resume…

I’ve been on there for some time now and, after a getting started period, must say that it somewhat changed me. I’m not going to make this one of these "10 reasons why I love twitter" type of posts, but let’s just make clear that twitter delivers instant news/headlines in bite size packages.

The people that I follow are carefully selected to keep the signal to noise ratio high. Basically, when they are going wild about something or another, chances are high I will be interested in that subject also. And since it’s only a short blimp of information, I’ll make a snap judgement to invest more time in it or not. The thing is, I got the info at hand (google), and a lot of what’s interesting is pre-filtered through people that deeply care about topics I would otherwise never dig into. So I get a lot of inspiration and topics handed by a variety of people and all I have to do is look at what’s relevant to me. Great, isn’t it

There’s 2 evolutions I’m waiting on:

1. Politicians making more active use of twitter. I know some people are trying (Barack Obama, Yves Leterme, Elio Di Rupo, … ) but I’m looking for more activity. Keep us posted on thoughts, ideas, developments in your world, … anything basically. Maybe we’ll catch something that inspires us. Not just during campaign…

2. What I’ll be looking at next is probably a way (yahoo pipes) to filter a bunch of RSS feeds from news sites into a twitter feed. Not because I don’t want to have their RSS feed, but because I want headlines in a centralized place (let’s say, only the soccer news for the Belgian first Division).

We all have an opinion on Microsoft and their products and strategies. I don’t care what camp you are in, if you’re totally pro or against Microsoft. There is one thing you can’t deny. Bill gates had a vision and shaped the IT industry.

He had a dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home". Looking at where we stand today, I personally think he overachieved. It’s not just a computer on every desk and in every home, it’s gone far beyond that. And if you want it or not, Bill gates and Microsoft have shaped a large part of this, for better and, most likely, also for worse.

I’m not going out on a "all hail" rant for Bill, but respect is definitely due.

I started noticing on events and various ad-hoc meets that a lot of the crowd I know is also on twitter, has a (couple of) weblog(s), is all hyped up about latest developments in the e-world, … and all in all are probably a bunch of early adopters.

If I compare that to the business reality I live in, I often find myself far away from those people on the technological front (I don’t work in a internet related business, for those who might wonder). In general, my colleagues represent the ‘average user’. What strikes me most about them (besides the fact they rely on internet exploder) is that they still consider the internet as this ‘out there’ thing that by definition has to be accessed through a browser, either on their desktop or on their mobile. Which to me indicates 2 points that need to change before the masses will be ready for things like twitter.

1. The internet is not a set of web pages. It’s a medium to transport digital content of any kind, that can be stored somewhere in that cloud.

2. Out of realizing point 1 follows that you don’t need (just) a browser to access that content. Which opens a lot of opportunities to work with this concept in innovative ways.

Given that people imho will eventually adopt these 2 things, there are interesting times ahead of us…

I recall, when I was young, there was a similar sentiment with fur coats. People owning one would think that the opposition had overly emotional arguments and very little reason or sense. The opposition would bring all sorts of excuses (some very legit and reasonable, others way out there) to make people wearing fur coats look bad.

The entire discussion with apple and its fanboys sometimes feel the same way. The army of fanboys will just react to the slightest notion of the word apple to scream to the world how good it is. On the other side the evil empire will not refrain from highlighting how some parts are actually not suitable.

Which just made me wonder, is apple the new fur? Something you either love, or hate? Are people losing sight of reason on this subject? Or is it just Steve J. having a lot alter egos posting on forums…

From an engineering point of view, the statement is ever so true. If 1 server can process 100 jobs every day, than 2 servers generally can process 200 jobs every day. (simplification, I know). So 9 women, 1 month, baby delivered.

From a business point of view, the first thing that comes to mind here is: does the return of adding that extra server really justify the investment. A story that makes it crystal clear.
A production plant for a car has an assembly line installed that produces 500 cars of one model every day and has been producing for the last 100 days. Installation of the assembly line cost 50.000k and took 20 days to install, test and be completely production ready. The lines are specific for one car and can’t be reconfigured. Every car sells for 1k. Recently, due to high demand of that model of car, they would need to produce 750 cars / day to fulfill market demand. The expectation is that this increased demand will last for 300 days, after that demand will drop to 500 again. Or put otherwise: there is a loss of 250k in potential revenue every day (or 75.000k over the 300 day period)

There are 3 options here (for simplicity sake). First one is: build another production line to produce the 250 extra cars / day. Option two is to slightly abuse (overclock, speed up, …) the existing line so it produces 565 cars / day. The last option is simply to ignore the higher demand, and keep producing 500 cars / day with the existing system, and work on a backorder. (and combination of the options are not possible)

Let’s do some maths for option 1. It takes 20 days to set up a new system, meaning you don’t get (20*250) 5.000k in revenue. After that you are able to build 750k cars / day, gaining you 250k extra income every day. In turn meaning that it would take 200 days before you paid for your assembly line and the 250k every day becomes bottom line profit. Summarized: installing the new machine cost you 55.000k (50.000 install + 5.000 in lost revenue) + 220 (20 install + 200 to repay the machine) working days before it makes you 250k/day profit. (to all you economical gurus out there, I know this is technically not entirely correct but I’m trying to get a point across). Since the expectation was that the increased demand would be 300 days you would effectively have profit for 80 days (300-220), it means you’ll get 20.000k (80*250) in bottom line profit and are stuck afterwards with an extra assembly line. Your main line would produce you a profit of (300*500) 150.000k.
Profit and result after 300 days: 170.000k + 1 unused line.

Now consider option 2. Your assembly line cost 50.000k and gets you 500k every day. So you’ll have payed it off after 100 days, in our example this means that your line brings in 500k to your bottom line every day. The speeding up of the line would cause the factory to be closed for 10 days but would get the production speed up to 565 / day. The only cost you’d have is a new software roll out on the robots.Some numbers.
Closing down for 10 days means missed profit of 5.000k (500k *10). However, it leaves you with 290 days (300 days of high demand - 10 for installation) of production at 65k extra profit per day. Or: an additional bottom line profit of 18.850k (65*290), and no unused machinery to take care off when the high demand is over. Your main line would make profit for 145.000k (290*500)
Profit and result after 300 days: 163.850k + nothing extra to maintain

Option 3 is easy on the maths side. You get 150.000k (500k * 300). Your machine was paid off, so all you get is the bottom line of 500 cars / day. 
Profit and result after 300 days: 150.000k + nothing extra to maintain

I would personally favor option 2. Even though there is less immediate gain, you are not stuck with costs associated to having that machinery around (even unused machinery still costs, in the sense that it takes space away for machinery that could be used). Which sounds like a better long term plan.

To go back to the 9 women theory, and the point of this article. Yes, 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month in certain situations but (big caveat) you’re stuck with 9 women afterwards…

On that blog I’ll be posting the more personal stuff. Cool links I found on the web, dear diary entries, rants about how incompetent the world around me is, … .

Seen some interesting sessions and met great people, thanks to @wolfr, @YvesHanoulle, @eddynaert and @pascalvanhecke.

My session product ownership ended in an interesting discussion on scrum in general, I’d love to continue but we were somewhat running out of time.

A big thank you to the organization of this great event…sign me up for the next edition!

I’ve played around on blogspot and before that on blogs.ict-blue and now I’m here to stay.

The relevant posts from blogspot have been transferred to here, blue didn’t really have a lot of relevance .

I’ll be doing some infrastructure works over the coming days, juggling around some subdomains and general monkey business with wordpress.

Welcome, enjoy your stay…

You are at the “professional” part of ardonio.com

Here is where I tend to post the more serious articles, dealing with all things business related. I will always try to keep this section away from the “dear diary” entries.

As far as the content goes, it represents the opinion of the author (in casu: me) and you are free to (dis)agree with it. Either on your own or in the comment section.

For those that really want to know more about my personal affairs, you could pay a visit to emporio.ardonio