How software projects are supposed to work

Originally written in March

Image placeholder:? A mouse has been literally drawn into a logic diagram

Here's how programming projects are supposed to work:

1. The client tells the developers what the program should be able to do
2. The developers scour through the client's words for hints of how the program must work internally
3. The developers make a plan of what they want to program
4. The developers run it past the client and explain as best they can what the program will be like
5. The client corrects the design (which simply means he or she clarifies what they said previously) and never speaks to the developers again
6. The developers divide the plan up logically to maximize the number of people working at all points in time
7. The developers execute the plan and finish the program with time to spare before the deadline
8. The developers deliver the program to the client
9. The client delivers the product to the end users (people like you)
10. The users get exactly the program they want and are happy

However, things rarely work in this "textbook" fashion. What happens in reality is very different. Jokes around it abound, but this is the gist of it:

1. The client tells the developers that they "need" a program that does something or another and demand that it use a certain algorithm
2. The developers plan out the program and realize that the algorithm the client suggested is only going to hider the way the program works.
3. The developers send a delegation to show the client the plan, and start programming to save time
4. The delegation explains the plan to the client, and why the algorithm should be avoided. The client does not understand the plan and demands to see a prototype
5. The development team largely stops what they're doing to produce the prototype
6. The delegation shows the client the prototype. The client takes back several things he said were necessary with criteria like "it just doesn't loook pretty, even if it would be easier to use", and remains unrelentless on the use of the algorithm
7. The developers scrap much of their work and start over
8. The client demands to know why the plan's dates aren't being met
9. The delegation stops work on the program to meet again with the client and explain
10. The client corrects something said before
11. More work is scrapped
12. The client forgets the meeting ever happened
13. Repeat steps 8 through 12 as many times as fate deems fit
14. The client's boss yells at the client for not having brought him the program in time
15. The client threatens the developers in whatever ways their contract doesn't cover
16. The developers rev up the speed, forsaking bug testing, and anything else they can, to avoid letting the threats come to fruitition
17. The developers deliver the program to the client
18. The client delivers the product to the end users (people like you)
19. The end users start encountering bugs, which they ask the person who gave them the program about
20. The client hopes his boss won't notice and charges at the developers, who are probably hospitalized by this point from the effort of the last crunch, demanding the bugs fixed by an arbitrarily near date
21. The developers work furiously from their "hospital beds" to fix those, and just those, bugs the client told them about, without checking the rest of the program to make it in time
22. The client proudly announces a "patch", "fix", "update", or "upgrade" (depending on which will impress his boss the most) and distributes it among the end users
23. Repeat steps 19 through 22 as many times as fate deems fit

And the moral of the story? If the software you got sucks, it was probably comissioned by an ass.

The Pokémon Syndrome

Originally written in December 2011

Image placeholder:? Professor Oak, a middle-aged man with greying hair, stands in an adventurous pose clad in typical Pokémon Trainer gear, including a baseball cap, a jacket, a backpack, shorts, tennis shoes, and hanging from his belt, a number of colorful hand-held devices. Caption: Lets do this! (Again!) †

Go do something you haven't done in a few years. Preferably something you've only done once. Something you really didn't do so well at. You think this time it'll be different: you're older, wiser, and have as and advantage over last time that there was a last time you can now look back to.

Except that… you don't.

After a while, you'll realize you're doing everything exactly the same! It turns out that when forced to make the same decisions under the same conditions, you'll come out with the same results. This is good: it means you are still the same person you were years ago; but it's also bad, because it means that, like a machine, given the same settings – the same input – you produce the same output; you haven't changed – haven't learned.

I call this "the Pokémon syndrome" because I discovered it playing the Pokémon games.

I am so stupid

So, I said I had a bunch of posts lined up for you the last time I was here
I wasn't lying
but they're nowhere to be seen

The reason is, I had the posts written, but I refused to actually set the automatic post date until I had done the illustration for them. Since these illustrations are, more often than not, easier to do on the computer, I've waited until I've had a computer and free time on it.

DIE FARMERS, DIE!

No, this is not a blog post about the whiskey rebellion. For one, the soldiers in the drawing are wearing uniforms that are five years out-of-date. (Though I have to admit it might be fun... especially if I could get Lora Innes in on it ...hmm)

This post is about link farming: possibly the only thing abhored ("hey!") by readers and moderators alike.

Link farming is the practice of having several other websites point to yours for no good reason. In the early days of the web this meant creating several "dummy" websites. Currently, the most popular form of link farming is posting spam comments, making the comment-enabled site their unwilling dummies in every sense of the world.

Link farming comments were usually easily identifiable because they contained out-of-context nonsense (apparently extracted from someone else's Word documents by a virus) and gibberish usernames. The link might sometimes be in the text, or be hidden in the username.

However, ever since this webcomic was posted, link farming comments have taken on a different approach. The spam bots now post apparently constructive. Stock phrases like "very intersting", "terrific post", or "no one could have said it better" are unfortunately what they now cycle through. Fortunately, they're still detectable.

As you may have noticed, during my hiatus, such bots took over my site, posting as many as 6 such comments in a single minute. Google spam detection caught 243 of them, but no less than 125 still made it into the public eye. Today, however, I can happily tell you they are all gone, and the actually meaningful comments remain.

Unfortunately, this means I am now requiring CAPTCHAs to post comments. My sincerest apologies go out to everybody.

Rumors of my death have been greatly exagerated

Yes, I know Mark Twain only looked like this during the last decade of his life, but he considers the pictures of the time the best pictures ever taken of him.

As you probably know by now, I'm in my senior year. You may also remember me mentioning I was required to write a thesis to graduate. For this, like all things in the area of computer science, it is required to write a computer program and make it work.

The Game of Throes

Throughout my years as a student, I likened college to an enormous game. In each level, you're introduced to a new game mechanic, which you then have to use to reach the next level. Any level may require you to use the mechanics from previous levels, each level is harder than the last, and no level is unpassable. But there's a reason games aren't considered real.

It's only polite, 3 of 5

Some people are just not built for their jobs

The next person I want to thank on my little "what has made real life tolerable" series is Startide.

The right textbook

Suppose you have to give a class about 3D animation for computer science majors; what textbook would be appropriate for such a course? A book about the software program being used that talks about all the hidden tools it has? No! The appropriate book is an animation bible.

This is the book we've been working with

It's only polite, 2 of 5

Continuing my little "what has made real-life tolerable" series, today I have a rather short post. This is a quick thank you to Turtleleaf and Camtheman.

Walk through walls

Could scientists be “thinking with portals”?

Physicists of the University of Athens have discovered a controversial mechanism that may allow people to walk through walls. Curiously, what has created the controversy is not whether it is safe or whether it violates the laws of physics; it’s the fact that the invention has been around for a long time.

The mechanism would allow people to walk from one side of a wall (or any physical barrier for that matter) to the other seamlessly; as if the barrier weren’t there. Such technology could completely change the way walls are built.

It's only polite, 1 of 5

Although my real life has been abhorrent the last few weeks, my online life has more than made up for it. So I’ve been thinking that a small show of thanks is in order for the people who have made it possible for me to keep my sanity. Therefore, I'm going to run a small series of blog posts, hoping they won't take too much time.

So first on the list (which has no particular order) is The Gennies!

Of course there’s more than four,
but I never would’ve finished the drawing
if I had tried to fit them all!

I forgot about St. Patrick's Day

Originally created for St. Patrick's Day, 2011

I have no excuse. I simply forgot to queue something for today. I know I'm only harming my own page-views, but still, I really am sorry.

Quote of the Day now powered by Tumblr

Yes, I shamelessly ripped off my own artwork. What of it?

You may remember that when I originally created my Twitter account, I also set up a “Quote of the Day” deal that automatically sent quotes I had hand-picked and collected. This was powered by CoTweet, which in the past I wholly and unreservedly recommended. If you’ve been watching my twitter account, you may notice that these quotes stopped on February 18

To keep it simple, CoTweet doesn’t exist anymore; ExactTarget Inc. discontinued it on February 15 of this year (they did finish sending the quotes I had scheduled – even those that were for after February 15 – that was nice of them) in favor of a paid alternative. I, of course, barely have money, so switching over was out of the question. I had to look for another, free alternative, which is where Tumblr comes in.

Sketchdumps are for WiPs

Drawing I was trying to finish for last year's Thanksgiving.
Obivously, I didn't make it in time.

One of the thing that irks me about the school year is how little time it leaves me to use the computer for art. On the one hand, because I take a bus that 90% of the time gets stuck in traffic, I have a practically guaranteed drawing session every day. On the other, if any of those drawings requires a little touch up in the computer to be finished (say, to add color), it most likely never will be finished.

A merry Christmas in spite of all

[Making-of video]
Pinecone is CC by Menchi

Every year, come December, I do the same thing: I greet or say goodbye to people with a cheerful "Merry Christmas." And every year I find the same sad reality: less and less people correspond. (Two people total gave any sort of answer this year.)

The thing is, they don't say anything at all! They either completely ignore what I said, or are so taken aback by the the unexpected greeting, they can't even utter a grunt in response. Clearly, no one else has wished them any form of happy holidays before me, seeming to support what Bill Watterson wrote 20 or so years ago:

"This season gets less and less merry each year."

Filmed in front of a live audience

…not exactly because it's the season to be jolly.

You probably noticed my new avatar, which I made yesterday. If you saw it used in one of my comments on someone else's old post, you'll be wondering how I managed to use it before creating it. But the interesting thing about this avatar is not that I've been wanting to make it since July, it's that I created it while Livestreaming.

Resorting to image macros

I've always thought image macros were a rather cheap way to convey an idea. After all, you're taking something someone else has made, and merely changing the caption to fit your own devices. Wouldn't it be so much better if people could make their own things from scratch?

However, as a Computer Scientist, I've been taught that things need to be as efficient as possible, and anything unnecessary that gets in the way of that has to go. As a researcher, I've learned that strong emotions are, to put it bluntly, something that literally gets in your blood and has to be used up before you can continue whatever it was you were doing before you felt that way. As someone who writes on the internet, I know that people need to hear from you, and that these are the things they want to hear about. And finally, as an artist, I'm supposed to know that the best way to channel these emotions, is by creating something out of them them.

So yesterday, when I became so-furious-with-myself-I-just-could-have-killed-something at discovering what was wrong with the program I was writing, I made this:

Annoyed kitty image macro copyrighted by thekraidster567 ^{[it is?]}
Text by me

Delicious spam

by Neil Motteram. November 2, 2005; San Francisco, California.

Yesterday I deleted my first Spam comment. When I enabled the possibility to comment anonymously, I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I never thought I'd have to face it this soon.

What's this? An actual blog post?

Preliminary image. Will be finished later

Of course, I've never actually
taken apart a coin, so I don't know if
this is even possible…
Nor do I encourage you to try

For weeks, I haven’t been able to focus on my studies. The fact is, I keep worrying about money. Maybe It’s the fact that my scholarship wasn’t paid for two months. Maybe it’s the fact that three-quarters of the people I went to high school with have graduated from college and I haven’t. Maybe I’ve been reading too much on how people in their thirties and forties who don't have money get money. Maybe I've simply grown too old for the "college" life. Whichever it is, somehow, I can barely complete a simple math problem before my thoughts turn, in some form or another, to money.

The frustrating part is that I already know what I’m going to do for money once I graduate, and I know exactly how I’m going to do it, yet the questions keep coming back, haunting me like some undead monster. I crunch away at them, desperately fixing the numbers which are still vague to me, in hopes that the thoughts will finally go away and leave me alone!

But no luck

Small update: new avatar

Considering I'm in the middle of the "what's been keeping me busy" series, which is basically a long drawn-out apology for not having posted all summer, I thought it would be best to not create another cause to appologise for. Unfortunately, I don't have anything finished I can post yet. I was aiming for a Columbus Day special, but I didn't make it in time.

I did, however, add a new avatar to my collection recently, by making the second panel of Last year's Halloween story into one (shown on the left). I think it's pretty self explanatory: too many times, I've wanted to say something with a shrugging expression; now I can.

I doubt I'll be able to finish anything until the Christmas break, but I do hope I can, at least put one more of the "what's been keeping me busy" series.

As for what I've been doing after the summer break, hey, I have classes!