Last week I was reading an article in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) regarding the naming of professor of computer science Judea Pearl of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as the winner of the Turing Award for 2011 for his contributions to Artificial Intelligence.  A link on an article led me to an hour and a half interview (sound only) of Judea Pearl.

Professor Pearl is quite accomplished.  Most of his achievements are far beyond my technical understanding and interests.  What called my attention for this blog were his comments regarding his childhood, which he believes helped him mold the person he is today.

Judea Pearl was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1936.  In May 14, 1948 Israel declared its independence.  At the time Judea Pearl was about twelve (12) years old.  He should have started attending what we refer to in the USA as Middle School in the K-12 education system.  Due to political and social reasons many individuals of Jewish believes were forced to leave their countries of birth and seek refuge in Israel.  Many people with advanced degrees found their way as middle and high school teachers.

At that time Israel faced the challenge of starting an independent nation and felt the need to succeed or perish.  The passion that resulted thanks to the state of mind of the population and the over educated teachers provided students like Judea Pearl with a unique environment in which to develop their intellect.

Judea Pearl believes that the education from K-12 all the way up to higher degrees leaves a lot to be desired in the USA.  Both students and teachers have lost their passion for learning and teaching.  This has considerably slowed down the potential for success as technical professionals and scientists.  In other words, it appears that for the most part, teachers and students have lost their passion to succeed and make a difference.

By no means I am at the technical level or have the accomplishments of professor Pearl.  That said; I was born in Peru from Italian parents that migrated to South America in the 1930’s in an attempt to escape the Italy of Benito Mussolini.  My parents waited years before they started a family.  My parents considered education extremely important.  My sisters attended a private French school while I went to an American one.  The teachers in both schools were quite capable and most of them had advanced degrees.  In the equivalent of High School years I had Physics and Math classes every day.  I was lucky to have the same Physics teacher for four years.  He had a PhD in Nuclear Physics.  The lab facilities, higher education and passion of the teachers helped most students understand and become quite comfortable with the subjects being taught.  In several occasions, which at the time I did not fully understand, teachers showed passion in what they did.  I recall that some teachers would make themselves available for one or two students Sunday mornings taking several hours from their personal time to help students understand a specific topic on a specific subject.  That is a behavior completely foreign to us in the USA.  Teachers, parents and students getting together on a weekend to help students succeed.  That is the passion that Judea Pearl saw when he was growing up.

Today I work developing software.  I play different roles depending on what is needed.  Sometimes I wear the hat of the principal software architect, others of a programmer and sometimes that of a tester.  I have always been fascinated by software engineering.  It seems that no matter how much you may know about the programming language being used for a project or the ins and outs of the operating system at hand, how software is developed plays a big role in the success of the project.  By following and improving on software engineering principles success tends to be a norm.  Of course just reading about a couple books on software engineering regarding in vogue methodologies (i.e., Agile) is not enough.  Success appears to be associated with the level of passion put into software development by all members in the development team.

I want to note that passion for the sake of passion would not lead to success.  Some of the members of a team may exhibit passion for recognition, high pay, overtime, etc.  In general passion for such goals does little for the success of the project and quality of the software product.  Passion needs to be applied to the development process, learning and teaching, talking and listening, directing and following, reading and writing among other tasks to help the developers become better as a team than the sum of their parts.  I believe that is the passion that professor Judea Pearl is referring too.

In the past few weeks I have been talking with my two sons, which happen to work in computer software development.  The idea that I came up with is to put up a web site with articles that relate to good software development practices.  Some entries might be related to software engineering while others may touch specific problems encountered during a regular day at work.  The idea is to post them and be open for comments.

My ability in coming up with attractive (and most important not taken) web domains is limited.  Because of this Giancarlo came up and has already registered the domain:  www.chubbycoders.com.  Currently the web site is under development.  Hope to have it up and running and with an initial post by the end of May 2012.  Hopefully we will be able to show the passion for software development we have on the entries and software that we will be posting.  Hope you bookmark it, stop by and provide feedback.

A passionate Naïve American

I married at a relatively young age.  My wife and I have two (2) boys.  Actually they are two grown men.  The oldest is currently divorced and has two (2) girls.  My youngest is married and has two (2) boys.  I would say that my family is relatively small in contrast to my wife’s.  She is one (1) of nine (9).  Her mother was one (1) of twenty three (23).  Her family originated in Spain.  Her parents were first generation born in Peru.  My sisters and I were first generation born in Peru.  I have spent about two thirds (2 / 3) of my life in the USA living in New York, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington State.

Growing up I did not ask too many questions regarding my family.  My parents were very private and seldom spoke of their respective families.  Most of our free time as children we spent playing, going to beaches, reading and studying.  All I know from my family is that it seems they just appeared in Peru and history started a few years after I was born.  I recall my wife asking my mother about a picture of my mother wearing her wedding gown.  My mother replied that she married in private and that part of her life was of no concern to my fiancé at the time.  Strange and perhaps somewhat rude answer but given that I was raised by my parents I thought that was normal response for them.  They were quite reserved.

My youngest sister skipped the first two (2) years of K-12.  My mother home schooled my sister.  My father did not my mother to work outside the house.  Because of this fact, my sister built a more in depth relation with my mother.  My mother told my sister many things I did not know.  It was not until a couple years ago while my wife and I were visiting my sister in New Heaven, that we started talking about how we were brought up and started to question many customs that lead to additional investigation until we finally figured one (of many) family secrets.

The following paragraphs contain some hints that at the time were normal to my family and our way of life but in retrospect they held glaring signs of what laid behind my parent’s secrecy.

Growing up we never drank milk with our meals.  We only had milk for breakfast.  Breakfast was always juice, bread with some butter and sugar and a glass of milk.  The story told to us by my parents was that fresh milk could be contaminated and we only drank canned milk.  Back then canned milk was quite more expensive than fresh milk so in order not to waste money, we just drank milk for breakfast.  I guessed that was the way most families lived.

Coming from an Italian family, cheese was typical companion of pasta.  Pasta was freshly made every single weekend.  Most of the times served with a beef and tomato sauce.  For some reason, we did not like the smell of Parmesan cheese so growing up we never ate lasagna or added cheese to pasta.  There was a single exception; we did use cheese with pesto sauce (which does not contain meat).

Shellfish was too expensive (at least that was what our parents told us).  For that reason we never had it as a meal.  Pork had trichinosis and people that lived near garbage dumps raised pigs.  I remember my father taking us on weekends to see a model farm ran by a local university.  We saw mostly dairy cattle and a few huge pigs, yet we never put together the facts and asked about having a meal with the ‘clean’ pork sold at the university store.  I guess kids will always be kids.

My great uncle always wore a black suit, white shirt, black tie and hat.  I recall asking why.  He replied that he did so to mourn the loss of his parents.  My uncle was married but he did not have children.  Once again, as a kid, it all made sense.

I can continue listing and talking about many customs our family had when I was quite young which slowly were lost, as we grew older and took our own paths in life.  My sisters and I attended Catholic schools.  My sisters attended a private French all girls school, while I attended a private American all boys’ school.  My wife is a classmate of my younger sister.

After some investigation which included DNA tests I found that my mother was Jewish.  Please note religious believes are not associated with DNA.  The purpose of the DNA test was to verify that my family originated in the central part of Europe.  Her family was German.  My parents decided to keep her faith a secret and leave Europe in the 1930’s.  If you need to find about compelling reasons for Jewish people to have left Europe at that time there is plenty of literature in the form of historical books.

My family spoke Genovese (an Italian dialect) while I was young and at home.  When I started kindergarten they stopped speaking all other languages language but Spanish.  The reason was that we were living in Peru, the official language was Spanish, and so from that point forward we just spoke Spanish.  That made sense, but keep in mind that my sisters spoke French and I English.  That did not make much sense but my parents always felt the need for us to be educated as much as possible.

One more item, that at the time did not called my attention, but something did not make much sense when I got older.  When I was about eight (8) years old, I was given by my parents to read several books by Jewish authors.  The novel that called my attention the most was Exodus by Leon Uris.  I also read a couple encyclopedias from A to Z and most (if not all) novels of Italian writer Emilio Salgari.  An eight-year-old kid reading books about the holocaust doe not make much sense (at least at the time it did not) but I learned to respect Jewish people and the atrocities they suffered by the Nazis.  They had to better prepare in the future so history would never repeat.

In the past few decades I have given some thought to my heritage and have spent some time reading about Judaism.  Last Friday, after finishing reading “An Invitation to Shabbat” by Ruth Perelson I decided to try the Sabbath.  As the book suggests, my wife and I started with some few items (candles, wine, music, food) and what is more important our close family that lives in Minnesota (my oldest son and his two (2) daughters).  My youngest son and his family live in Indiana.  Because of this, we were not able to get them involved at this time.  The idea was to start and then like a craftsman, work on what you have and build upon it.

It is hard (if not impossible) to figure out what others think and feel, but I can tell you what my experience was with our first Shabbat.  I felt in peace and joyful.  On my day-to-day life I work developing / managing development of computer software.  My regular workdays on average span twelve plus hours.  On weekends I typically work an additional ten to fifteen hours.  Most of my weekend work is typically done very early in the mornings before breakfast and a few hours after breakfast while my wife sleeps an additional two to three hours per day.  Once she is up, showered and dressed I block any and all things related to work.  Otherwise life would be impossible for my wife and myself.  If you think my work habits are unique, I have a sister that lives in Hamden, CT and is a professor / researcher in molecular biology at Yale.  She is single, never married and has no pets (I have two miniature pinschers).  On average she works and reads about her field lose to one hundred hours per week.  We speak on Skype most weekends and sometimes it is early morning while others is mid afternoon.  Given that she does not spend much time at home, she does not have Internet access or cable.  I typically find her in her office or her lab.

The big question to ask her and myself is if we are happy.  As I mentioned, it is quite difficult to figure out if someone is happy and at peace.  I tend to live a relatively happy and somewhat stressful life.  But what I experienced at the start of my last weekend make me feel at peace with myself.

Moving forward, we will try when possible to observe the Shabbat.  I fully understand that sometimes we have some social commitments that will take precedent over our plans.  Hopefully as time goes by we will be able to reach a time in our lives in which we will observe with family and friends every single Sabbath.

The Naïve American

As readers of my blog know, I do not care much for politics unless they are geared to improve on Naïve Americans as a whole.  Politics in our country, since we became an independent nation, has been geared to two (2) things:  Prevent any group of people to become royalty and dominate the country (which has failed miserably) and allow special interest groups (the upper 1% and the middle 15%) to take advantage of the rest of the population.  As we all know, unions and special interest groups (the middle 15%) have contributed to the debacle of our country by negotiating wages and pensions that communities, cities, counties, states and our country can no longer afford.  But as we can see, teacher unions, just to mention an example, will do whatever it takes to get what they want at the expense of the collapse of our economy while at the same time not being able to deliver basic quality education in the K12 segment.  As I have stated in many articles in this blog, the USA is ranked 20^th in education worldwide way behind China, Germany and Israel.  Do not follow the logic of most Naïve Americans that agree with the state of affairs in education.  I guess I would better understand if I were a teacher and part of their union and was getting benefits that our country is not able to afford.  Please take a look at what has happened (history) with unemployment in Greece (12.6% @ 2010), Italy (8.4% @ 2010) and Spain (20.1% @ 2010) and the damage to their economies due to excessive benefits that the people in such countries and the European Union was not able to afford.  I guess that due to the fact that we live up in the hill in our crystal tower and are isolated from the rest of the world, our society will never decline.  If you believe along these lines please contact me.  I have the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for sale (ha, ha, ha).

As we most know but few of us stop to reflect on, when we watch the news and see some natural disaster or the murder of Naïve Americans by criminals robbing a pharmacy to steal Oxycodone to resell in the black market, we just ignore and keep on waiting for the sports segment to learn how our football, baseball or hokey team did on their last game.  The same happens when watching economical and education related news.

Well, this weekend I found out that a person very close to me made a decision that to some extent will affect higher education and economy in our country.  What is about to happen and our society and politicians should prevent from occurrence makes me think on the future of the USA.  Allow me to explain using an example.

In the early 1930’s work by a group of scientist led by the USA got together in Los Alamos to work on a secret project.  As we all know in the early 1940’s the course of history was changed by the USA when the second world war came to an end thanks to the use of two (2) nuclear bombs which force the end of the second world war and the sick dreams of some people to dominate the world.  Most of the scientists were born in different countries but they all became US citizens or as I like to say, they became part of the Naïve Americans.  Today, if you visit most top ranked universities and private research and development labs in our country, you will find a disproportioned number of scientists, professors and engineers that were born abroad and have or might still be in the process of becoming US citizens.  Many are just applying for residency to get educated and then return to their countries.  By doing so they are able to work close to their families and demand very good wages (in most case less than in the USA) and help develop science and engineering.  The end result will certainly be that less and less brain power will come to our country which will make it harder and harder to compete in the world economy.

Most Naïve Americans have the idea that China (among other countries) are poor and most people live in poverty conditions.  While such conditions are to some extent a reality, each day more people in China, India, Russia and other developing countries are transitioning from a large lower income to a larger middle and upper middle classes.  The number of development projects in China is rising.  The size of land development projects far exceeds the ones in the USA.  Cities dedicated to research centers with buildings to host scientists costing billions of Dollars are popping up on the Chinese landscape.  Were in the USA is this happening?  Nowhere.

This person that I am talking of spent the past three (3) weeks in China.  Visited a couple universities and many tourist sites (including the Forbidden City and the Terracotta Soldiers).  After a fifty (50) minute presentation, the university directors asked this person if she would be interested in heading a research institute.  They needed an almost immediate answer.  After comparing what the offer was to what is currently being offered in an Ivy League school, the person decided moving to China.  The main drawbacks are air quality and the language.  Otherwise if that opportunity would be made available to me I would have a quite hard time finding reasons why not taking it.

We need to make sure our country makes the necessary changes before there is little or no talent at all willing to make the USA their home.

The Naïve American

The point being that given that there are no granddaughters or dogs this weekend, my wife and I got up shortly after 07:00 AM and sat down for breakfast.  While at the breakfast counter, I looked outside and noticed an overcast day.  My wife mentioned she was somewhat cold.  As programmed, the furnace (we live in Minnesota) kicked in shortly after 07:00 AM and raised the indoor temperature to a comfortable 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  I mentioned that spring is on its way, which made me comment on the fact that in the southern hemisphere kids are about to start school.  My wife corrected me.  She mentioned that in most Latin American countries, school used to start around April first.  Things have changed in the past couple decades.  One of her nephews currently lives in Chile but officially resides in Peru and works for a multinational company, returned with his family to Peru last month to put the kids back in school.  The school year starts at the beginning of March.  Kids in Latin America appear to have two (2) months of summer vacation providing them with an additional month of school per year.  When one considers that kids spend twelve to thirteen years in K-12, an extra month a year provides about two (2) additional years in school.  Are you still wondering why the US K12 education is falling behind?  Of course sheer time spent t school on its own is not the solution, but when kids spent additional time attending classes and not sports, then the picture starts getting clear!

The conversation then shifted to the news that some politicians in Minnesota are interested in extending the school year by starting a few weeks earlier before Labor Day.  The reason is that teachers want to make more money in salaries and pensions so that seems to be a good justification.  On the other hand, special interest groups that represent hotels and resorts in the state are against the proposed modification.  They claim that by reducing the summer season the hospitality industry would be affected.  That is how people views things.  Has any one put a few seconds of thought on why kids need to go to school and get the best possible education in order to be able to compete with the new world economy?  Of course not!

This past week there was a commercial on TV in which K12 kids surround President Obama, is promoting our world class (the US is ranked 20^th worldwide in public education).  A teacher union paid the ad.  Mr. Obama does not care what happens with our kids and future.  As he stated earlier this week when he made a comment unknowing that the microphone was open, after he is reelected then he would be in a much better position to deal with some international issues with Russia.  His only interest is reelection; his children should economically do well with the endorsements and books he has received and will be receiving after he leaves office.

Naïve Americans, we need to make changes to our way of life.  We need to focus on the future of our country.  We do live in a crystal tower and do not want to see reality.  The world is moving forward and we are staying behind.  Our traditional school system was built to produce a large number of blue-collar workers.  As our country reduces technical and manufacturing jobs, there will be fewer opportunities for blue collar working families, which have made our middle class.  A country (not only the USA) with a small middle class is plagued with issues (do you remember the 1% and Occupy Wall Street).  Take a look at the history of the world and you will realize the urgency of stepping up on education to help us provide for generations to come.

The Naïve American

I started programming using assembly and FORTRAN IV.  I then migrated to PLI and PLC.  Used BASIC, Pascal, and others.  My favorite of all times is C.  The language is very close to machine instructions.  For readers that might think that C is a language of the past and now one needs to use Java or its Microsoft copy C#, I just want to let them know that the Windows operating system was and is being written in C.  Device drivers are also written in C.  I fully understand that for some tasks you need to use C# because Microsoft has made it very hard for developers to program in C using the win64 API.  Portability is something Microsoft does not promote because of the fear of moving applications / servers to what appears to be more robust and higher performance platforms such as Linux.  Talk about ODBC with a business developer and the dialog is done before it starts.  By the way I like and do program in C#.  Have written a few hundred thousand lines of code.

The book promotes hacking from the point of view of understanding how software is written and being able to code in ways that tend to avoid people to gain control of it and use it in unintended ways.  Typical exploits are used to gain access to the host computer and stealing information.  Most hackers are interested in taking credit card and social security numbers.  Of course there is another reduced group that is interested in stealing corporate secrets.  At that level governments (including China and the USA) participate in such activities.  The highest types of hacker are spies interested in getting their hands on national security secrets.  At the very low end one finds young people that feel they are in control by hacking computers and injecting viruses just for the fun of it.

For the Naïve American, the interest is purely educational.  I have read several books on cryptography and use and plan to use additional algorithms and techniques to secure data.  The Naïve American is not in agreement with the concept of having hackers break in into computers and causing damage or stealing information with the idea that it helps society find issues and then fixing them.  By just publishing vulnerabilities software developer should realize that it is in their best interest to correct issues before the general public learns about them and decide to purchase products from a different and more secure vendor.  If this idea is foreign to you look at how capitalism (should) works.

The book comes with a CD and references several tools that can be used to check for vulnerabili9ties.  I would assume that most of the vulnerabilities described in the book have been patched.  Of course one may always encounter a legacy system with some open door inviting hackers with lit5le or no moral values.

The Naïve American has experimented with some of the tools and examples.  Given that I am considering Linux as a possible platform for a future project, I purchased an Ubuntu Linux machine for development and to check out some additional hacks.

I recommend the book to software developers.  It provides insights on what to do in order to not open vulnerabilities, which may be easily exploited.

The Naïve American

Not sure if it is just me or programs on TV are getting somewhat boring and repetitive.  Reality shows have never been my cup of tea and when you watch a good looking woman weighing around 100 lbs hit a 200 lbs male that appears to be in relative good physical condition (at least compared to me), I just feel the urge to look use my remote and move on to something else.  A few weeks ago my wife and I decided on enabling (for a fee of course) the DVR in the cable box.  We keep handy episodes of a handful programs that due to their scheduled time or just by being the best of the worst we watch towards the end of a busy day.  The Colbert Report is one of the ones that fall is the first category.

This week my wife and I watched an episode of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.  As usual Stephen Colbert is amusing and witty.  There were a few comments about the forefathers of our country that called my attention because the Naïve American has been pointing out the same observations for at least a couple decades.  Allow me to elaborate.

Naïve Americans have the false believe that our country was founded by a group of people that were interested in founding a nation with freedom and equality for all.  In reality that was not the case.  Our country was founded by less than 1% of the population.  Such group were the very wealthy that had to desire in paying taxes.  The issue was not the king of England or taxation without representation.  It was just the fact that they did not wish to pay taxes.  Not much has changed in the past few centuries since then.  As we saw a few weeks ago on TV, Warren Buffet pays taxes at a 15% rate while his secretary with a net worth so small compared to her boss, pays her dues at a 30% rate.  In our country the top 1% pays less that the bottom 99%.  What is interesting is that most Naïve Americans do not seem to understand the problem and its consequences or care for it.

Our government system was designed to be the model for all nations.  That sounds good and makes most Naïve Americans feel as is we are the chosen ones.  Yes, we do live in a crystal tower on top of a hill.  In reality, our system of government was designed to avoid one of the founders to become king and create a dynasty.  That is it.  Our government system is no better or worse than any other in the world.  Most Naive Americans believe that we are free.  That is just a perception.  While in most countries in the world people are allowed to drink and smoke cigarettes anywhere and with little (if any) concerns about age, in our country we have absurd laws that cut on our true (not perceived) freedom.

When we vote, our votes do not count.  Politicians, who answer to the wealthy 1% of the population, in order to help them get elected, periodically reshape electoral districts.  The reason is not to serve but to become somewhat wealthy with payoffs and by being able to bypass insider trader’s laws.

Last week the news was talking about “pink slime”.  This is a term that was coined by an employee of the FDA.  Beef processing houses used to separate the parts they trimmed of the prime cuts (mostly grease) to be used for dog food.  A decade or so ago someone decided to grind the waste, heat it up and then clean it with ammonia.  After freezing it into blocks it was no longer used for dog food but was allowed to be mixed with ground beef for human consumption.  The person in charge in the FDA stated that all was well with the process.  After she retired from the FDA she worked for the packing companies for over a decade with a million dollars per year salary.  If this is not corruption what is?  Naïve Americans believe that we are free and there is justice in our legal and political systems.  Just stop and smell the roses.  Corruption and oppression is all around us.  Not sure what needs to occur for Naïve Americans to wake up.  The movie The Matrix seems to be quite similar to what goes in our country.  Money talks at all levels.  Not much (if any) is done because it is the right thing to do.  All is done because someone somewhere is going to get something out of it.

America, we need to wake up before it is too late!

The Naïve American

In order to describe some basic software engineering concepts I will provide with a set of scenarios and recommendations which if followed should make most (never say all) software projects a success.  So why most software products and projects are a failure?  Read along and you should find the answers for yourself.

Software development is both and science and an art.  As a matter of fact, most (as was previously stated, never say all) engineering disciplines are both a science and an art.  For example, in civil engineering, an architect might design a structure (i.e., building, bridge, etc) which should be strong enough to support the stress and fatigue of it’s intended use and last for the expected / specified lifetime.  Structures are designed and built differently based on location.  A four-lane bridge for general traffic (automobiles, trucks) is designed and built differently when the intended location is Southern California than when its location is somewhere in Maine.  One of the sites the bridge is prone to experience rather warm temperatures, lots of traffic, earthquakes, strong winds, etc, etc, etc.  The counterpart in Maine might expect lower temperatures and perhaps salt corrosion if the structure is near or on the water.  Both bridges will share some basic requirements but they also have unique ones.  Being a layman in civil engineering, I can understand how requirements for structures will differ.  That does not make me a civil engineer nor gives me the ability to design one.

Algorithms are at the core of any software development project.  You use your favorite web browser and look up the definition.  Most people would just type the word “algorithm” and follow some of the links returned by the search engine of their choice.  I tried Google and at the top of the search I found a link to Wikipedia and a dictionary.  A dictionary tends to provide a basic definition that is good enough to understand the term (e.g., a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor).  If you look at Wikipedia you may find something like “An algorithm is an effective procedure for producing a well-defined function”.  You need to realize that Wikipedia contents are generated by contributions of many people who in most cases do not have the experience or background or have some agenda to contribute.  Personally I seldom look at the contents of Wikipedia.  If I do, I check references and then narrow my search to reliable sources (typically papers and books from accredited universities).  I have taken several courses on computer algorithms and have also read several books on the subject.  It just happens that this quarter I have registered to attend a computer science course on advanced algorithms at the University of Minnesota.  The book for the course is “Algorithms” third edition by Thomas Cormen, Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest and Clifford Stein.  I just happen to have contacted Dr. Rivest years ago when I developed the first content addressable storage regarding possible drawbacks in the use of MD5 digests to be used as names / handles for files.  Dr. Rivest is an expert in software encryption and hashes.  The book defines an algorithm as follows:  “Informally, an algorithm is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values, as output”.  Hopefully you are able to see the nuances in the definition and be motivated to delve further into the subject matter with the invitation by the initial definition presented in the book.  Please note that by reading a good textbook you will not become an expert in the subject.  You also need the experience and hopefully you will be able to come up with better than average elegant approaches (algorithms) to solve software issues that you may be confronted with in a project.

MapReduce is allegedly the mechanism / technology / algorithm used by Google to manage huge amounts of data.  Allegedly Google has developed a proprietary mechanism (Google’s patent #7,650,331) to manage large sets of data using a distributed architecture.  Google does not make use of a SQL database (i.e., SQL Server, MySQL, etc).  Apparently Google uses no-sql.  By reading books that describe to some extent the technology, MapReduce is nothing else that the implementation of the divide-and conquer paradigm that has been used for decades in multiple algorithms such as merge sort.  Being able to file a patent does not require an elegant or unique algorithm.  As the Google patent demonstrates, one is able to patent an old idea just applied to a different scenario (in this case a distributed system).  Given that America is becoming a very litigious society, it is the best interest of companies to be able to fill their shelves with patents.  The ability to do so tends to be a function of the quality of the methods / processes developed by software engineering teams.

Computer Science (CSci) as its name states is a science backed up by mathematics.  CSci is also considered art.  Once again, going back to a dictionary, art is defined as:  Works produced by such skill and imagination.  When viewed under this definition, CSci requires both education and experience.  We all have reached some level of formal education.  When studying any science or mathematics, we first read the textbook and attend lectures on a subject.  In order to solidify our knowledge we perform some exercises and tend to solve some problems.  Sooner or later in our professional careers (assuming you exercise in some technical, scientific or mathematical field) we have encountered problems that due to our education and experience have been able to recall one or more techniques that when applied to the situation at hand, tend to solve the issue.  Based on education and experience some solutions are more efficient (consume less resources) and elegant (simple to describe, implement and maintain) than others.  I have made on multiple occasions reference to the popular idiom  “There is more than one way to skin a cat”.  As I always say, “yes there is, but of the entire possible set, there is one that is worst and one and only one that is best”.  The ability to most of the times produce solutions that lean towards the best side is the result of education, experience and ability which can easily be described as art.

 “The Art of Computer Programming” is what one may say another example that computer programming is not only a science backed up by mathematics, but also an art in itself.  Donald Knuth has written (and as far as I know he is still doing so) a collection of books that deal with the description and analysis of may computer-based algorithms.  Professor Knuth started work on the book set in the 1960’s.  As I recall in the 1980’s most respected software developers and computer scientists frequently referred to the works of professor Knuth searching for algorithms that could be used when confronted with a new design.  I have owned a couple copies of “The Art of Computer Programming”.  The main reason for this is that the set has been growing through the decades.  I currently have this set of book at home on a desk I use to study, read and think.  Perhaps this is an indication that I am not a young pup.

Most of us at several points in time (some more than others) get ill and have the need to seek medical attention. Depending on the severity of the ailment, we make an appointment over the phone with a clerk.  The day of the appointment we show up and a receptionist collects information and typically the co-payment for the visit.  After a few minutes a nurse leads us to a consulting room making a quick stop by the scale.  After taking our temperature and blood pressure we are asked a few questions as to why we are interested in seeing a general / family medicine practitioner.  Finally we see a physician.  If the ailment is obvious the physician prescribes some medicine and out we go to the pharmacy.  In most cases after a few days we are feeling well.  If the issues affecting us are not than obvious, we get sent to the lab for a battery of tests.  Typically some tests are of chemical origin (sugar level, white cells count, etc) while others may be imaging (i.e., x-ray, CT, MR, etc) using some form of x-ray source.  The results might lead to a diagnosis or the issue might be elevated to a specialist.  If the issue requires surgery, one would be referred to a surgeon.  It is clear that just being associated with a healthcare organization does not qualify an individual to perform brain surgery.  The same holds true for software development.  I know of a receptionist that used to make minimal wage at a software development company.  One day I was her reading some “For Dummies” book.  A month later she got a raise that increased her hourly rate by a factor of five (5).  She was now a software developer.

If you watch some television you must have seen a commercial for a prescription drug used to treat / prevent acid reflux.  I watch (typically sleep in front of the television screen) television about an hour a day.  Around 08:00 PM, based on workload, I tend to start shutting down my computers.  I typically run three (3) different computers.  Given the resources available on the different computers and their intended uses, it is not technically or economically feasible to virtualize the dozen machines that I have at home.  That said I do run VirtualBox on a couple machines mostly to access a few VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that have side effects on the network and to run different operating systems (Linux and different flavors of Windows) on the same hardware.   Getting back to watching television, it was not until a few months ago that for the first time my wife and I, at insistence from one of my sons, that we got DVR from the cable company.  Now we record a few programs during the day that we might watch when we are available to spend an hour or so in from of the flat screen.  No matter what my wife and I have going on during the day, on workdays around 08:30 PM, we watch World News with Diane Sawyer on ABC News.  If you watch television around 05:30 PM, it becomes obvious the demographics watching based on the type and amount of commercials.  In particular there is one that start with an actor wearing a white physicians coat attempting to use a jack hammer on what appears to be a road construct ruction zone in a downtown area.  The person does not fit in the scene.  In the next scene a husky male, wearing blue jeans, boots and a tool belt is wondering in what appears to be a pharmacy aisle looking for medication to cure the symptoms that he appears to portray (heartburn / acid reflux).  In a following scene the physician is discussing with the patient the symptoms, which lead to a prescription for the pharmaceutical in question.  The moral of the story / commercial “you do your job and let the physician do his” or something among those lines.  Perhaps I should get a lawyer and demand some type of royalty from the AtraZeneca Nexium commercial.

One can easily draw an analogy between technicians, engineers, system managers, software developers, computer scientists, QA, chief technical officers, chief information officers, IT managers, and many other people whose job is associated with computers and / or software at different levels (users, super users, system administrators, maintenance, developers, analysts, scientists, etc) whose jobs at different organizations are associated with providing computer and / or software based services / products.  Such organizations tend to have receptionists, clerks, supervisors, managers, etc, etc, etc.  An individual just by belonging to such organizations do not qualify to design software.  There is of course the exception when the person reads a book “For Dummies” and in a couple weeks is developing software.

Requirements are extremely important.  They should unambiguously document the use of some software to be / being developed.  The idea is quite simple.  If the intended use of a software product cannot be unambiguously documented then no one knows what to do.  If no one knows what to do there is no way to generate a design or a set of test procedures to test the software because no one knows what the software is supposed to do.  This simple logic is seldom put to work.  Most software projects are started and in many cases completed or canceled before a useful requirements document are generated.  Different methodologies have different ways of generating and maintaining requirements.  Most methodologies are flawed.  Some make sense but are not well known or their steps are not easy to follow.  One may be led to believe that there is no good software development methodology.  This is far from being true.  As an analogy one can take diets.  Not sure how many diets are available.  Some seem to work for some for some periods of time.  Most fail miserably.  The fact is quite simple.  Our bodies are engines.  Engines need fuel.  If our bodies burn 1,500 calories per day and we intake 2,000 we will just be gaining weight.  On the contrary, if we change our life style by incorporating exercise and reducing our caloric intake, then if we consume 3,000 calories per day but due to exercise and other healthy habits burn 3,000 calories in the same time period, we might not live one hundred years, but on average we will have a longer and healthier life.  Like I said, there are many ways to skin a cat but there is only one way which is best.  Burn the same amount of calories as one consumes on a daily base and forget any other type of diet.  In reality software development is several orders of magnitude more complex so things are not so simple as a diet.  What is extremely important is to have unambiguously defines requirements written in a succinct way.  Writing a Victorian novel is not the proper way to write software requirements.  The detail and number tends to be a function on the level of expertise of the lead system architect and the development team as a whole.  Being involved in many software development projects and having knowledge of different methodologies attain this level of expertise.  As we all know, no matter how the metaphor is applied, there is never such a thing as a free lunch.

Design by committee is a term that is typically used for both design and requirements even though these are two separate aspects (requirements and design) of any software development project.  A good designer needs education and experience.  A person without a software background is able to design basic software.  Today wizards allow individuals with little or no computer science education to create software (specially when it is a GUI web based) not understanding or knowing what they are doing.  Such approaches tend to work now and then form small companies.  As the demands for the software grow, there are no wizards that can help.  One needs to understand what is going on and be able to make the necessary changes or come up with an alternate solution.  While developing software one runs into situations when the desired effect is not achieved with the initial approach.  One then needs to look for alternate ways to achieve the goal.  This process is based on know how and experience.  In cases when one needs assistance, one should be able to look for it consulting with other team members or vendors.  In many cases, the higher the position in a software development project, the least the person is willing to accept that help is needed.  When too much involvement by the entire team on all aspects of the project is reached, no one is responsible for failures.  Humans tend to blame others.  When the software is properly partitioned and individuals are assigned to specific modules, developers tend to take responsibility for their part.  This is especially true when a separate group does testing.  That way the team as a whole responds to issue encountered by QA.  If one looks at standards that have been developed by many individuals from different companies (e.g., DICOM), the results tend not to be elegant, bloated and the software implementations are poor (slow and consume lots of resources).  When single individuals come up with something (e.g., Linux) the result tends to be elegant and performs well.  This does not mean that a single individual developed Linux or that all members that participated in the committees that developed DICOM contributed.  The rule of thumb is to assign parts or a project to a single individual and develop the system in such a way that all interactions are based on clients making requests and a server responding to them.  This can actually be done with client / server interactions or via the use of APIs.  The key is to make each module responsible for their operation based on the requirements for the software.  Once again, being able to partition a project of any size requires know how and experience.

Lead by example is something that is not easy to do and even harder to follow, but when achieved, results are typically success.  The idea is for the senior / lead system architect to show how things are done.  It all starts with requirements and their associated documentation, through design with associated documentation, implementation and associated unit testing to product delivery and if needed initial support.  Less experienced engineers, when properly motivated and interested in learning and advancing tend to imitate success.  As usual this is easier said than done.  If one has a single rather simple project under the belt and the software is supported by an army of technical service personnel, then that might not be the person to put in charge.  The same holds true for people that work as system administrators and are asked to design software with little education and experience.  Being able to issue database queries and use a report writer to generate reports with colorful graphics does not qualify the person to become a lead system architect.  Once again, politics get in the way of reason and after a few years when the software is a failure people stops and thinks on what was done.  At that time it is too late for the software and the project.  It is better to address most (all is not possible) situations before they turn into issues and then into problems.

A couple decades ago I was involved in the development of the first document management system ever.  The project started by processing documents for insurance companies and then shifted to address medical images.  The general manager had a PhD degree in nuclear physics.  He used to work for a well-known company (Xerox), which at the time had a quite known research center in Palo Alto, California.  On paper this individual fit the bill to manage the project.  This individual had quite an amenable personality.  He might have been top notch in nuclear physics but had little understanding (to say the most) on hardware and software development.  At the time, there was no off-the-shelf standard hardware or software to put together the product.  Top executives at the fortune 500 company backed up the project.  The first and probably largest mistake was assigning the lead system architect role to an individual from IT.  He might have had experience with databases and report writing, but that was it.  The lead architect had to experience or knowledge on hardware, networks, imaging, etc, etc, etc.  As the project blew out its schedule, the perceived solution was to throw at it more money.  With that extra funding additional resources were brought in.  The project lasted several years.  Towards the end, software QA was a 24 x 7 operation.  Each day new issues were discovered.  At some point in time after over 100M dollars (in 1980’s value) the original project was cancelled.  Somehow after a few months a second pass for the project, under the same guidance was authorized.  The system architect blamed the computer language used to program.  The first pass used C so the second was done in Pascal.  I left when the first project was cancelled.  After a few more years (do not know the actual cost) the project failed and it was cancelled for a second time.  The lead system architect was able to get authorization with very few resources to run a final and third pass.  This time the software was written in Ada (do you know what Ada is?).  Of course, the language has nothing to do with the success or failure of a project.  After a year or so the project was finally put to rest permanently.  What is interesting to note is that the lead system architect returned to IT to deal with databases and report writers.  I ran into him at a seminar in a hotel in downtown Minneapolis.  He was doing just fine back were he started a decade or so before.

Testing is important in any software development project.  The same individuals developing the software cannot do testing.  Developers must create the methods to perform unit testing.  System testing must be performed by a different organization.  Such tests must be developed following the software requirements.  QA should never see the design documentation nor be exposed to the source code of the project.  The issue is that testing then becomes a function of the actual code and not of the requirements.

For software to be successful it must be flexible.  If the software works perfect for only the specified set of test input and it fails under different situations, the quality is not there.  The software must be designed in a way that it can evolve not breaking previous uses and allowing for foreseeable changes in the business.  Very few software modules are able to adapt to changes and survive a decade or two.  When the software is properly designed and implemented with simple yet robust technology, the software product tends to be useful for long periods of time.  When little though is put into a project, the resulting software tends to become obsolete in as little as a year or two.  Some companies thrive in such models because they imply recurrent business.  If you do not understand this, take a look at the different technologies provided by Microsoft.  Most of them do not last more that a couple years.  Every time they are replaced with something quite different with the promise to solve all problems.  This is type of behavior / approach is known as the “silver bullet”.

Team organization is quite important for any software development effort.  This is true from projects with a single person to ones with hundreds of people in multiple disciplines, which may interface with products / modules form other companies.  Putting together a team is important in order to have a successful project and quality software result.  Tem members should be selected based on expertise and track record.  Getting back to the healthcare analogy, you would not want to have surgery performed on you by a receptionist just because you like him / her.  You can always have some simple surgical procedure done by a general surgeon, but if a specialized procedure were required, only a specialist would be considered.  Software is no different, yet people tend to go against basic logic and allow people with limited qualifications to take charge.

Politics in projects, no mater the size of the organization or the team (at least two people are needed to disagree but a single person with his / her own agenda qualifies) needs to be addressed and managed for a project to succeed.  This subject appears to be foreign to most people, yet many books have been written about the topic.  I have personally read a few.  Software development is a human activity.  We as humans tend to resist change and have preconceived ideas as to what needs to be done.  This is just one reason for having a simple, short and complete set of requirements for a software project.  By no means this statement patronizes the waterfall model.  There are different methodologies better suited to collect and maintain requirements during a software development project.  A properly managed project assigns team members to different tasks / modules based on their education level, experience and track record.  I have run across several individuals with advanced degrees (PhD) that could not develop software even if their life depended on it.  The issue is that humans tend to be polite and not tell individuals that they should be doing something else or they just tell other members their thoughts but no action is taken.  This builds friction which when paired with lack of expertise, produces an environment in which success is typically not achieved.  The best way to prevent political problems is to put together the proper team and assign tasks that are palatable to the individuals.  By having quality requirements and proper architectures, team members can see how their contributions to the software make a difference.  If a problem is encountered, developers are more inclined to look at their pieces and correct them when needed, than just blaming other modules (pointing fingers).  Some times developers go the additional mile by making the necessary changes to their modules to compensate for the shortcomings of others while still keeping the integrity of the software.

After reading most of the contents of this blog entry you might come to the conclusion that the best software development team is a completely homogeneous group.  This is not the case.  Diversity is important.  The issue is to make sure that diversity comes from backgrounds that may contribute to the project and that such individuals are not charged to lead.  Different ideas should always we considered but when all is said and done, someone needs to make a decision as to how the group should proceed.  During my professional career I have had the opportunity to work for small, medium and large size companies.  I have also done contracting / consulting work.  My background is a mix of electrical engineering and mostly computer science.  I have worked in quality assurance groups and have supported systems at customer sites.  That diverse background has helped me come up with innovative approaches to solve design problems.  Some time ago I was working for a company in the east coast.  I was in charge of developing a color console for a process control system.  The company was developing the entire system.  The system could control the environment in buildings or an oil refinery.  The product was software and hardware based.  My team had a PhD in psychology.  Obviously the individual was intelligent.  He was also very dedicated.  Married without children, just a cat at home.  Because of this, we were able to work long days and enjoy them.  In a few occasions this team member would get stuck in a task.  Without technical assistance he would spend several days in a rut.  I recall one occasion when we were dealing with a driver for a UART.  Given that his background was not in computer science or electrical engineering, the concept of how to control the chip to process RS232 input and output in queues at the interrupt level was overwhelming.  After I notice that we were not moving forward, we got together and in a day, with a different design, the issue was addressed and we were able to continue to make very good overall progress.  A year or so ago I was optimizing a file transfer for an application on Windows.  The specific transfer operation was not intended for what it was designed.  I spent a few days optimizing the command line interface using a similar approach as to the RS232 driver I worked with my team member a couple decades ago.  Of course the issue was over the TCP/IP network and had multiple data buffers and queues and was working with multi core processors.  The point is that knowledge and experience were brought up to solve two separate but similar problems decades apart.  Diversity in backgrounds is most of the time beneficial specially when used the proper way.

There is a cryptography expert that has made his home the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  I have read a few of his books and periodically skim over articles in his newsletters.  He has a friend / co-worker that has repeatedly made the comment (perhaps is more than a comment but a believe) that the software development industry is in shambles.  This person claims that all software is full of bugs, insecure and not stable (and he is not just referring to the Windows platform).  I have read some of his articles and based on my experience have to somewhat agree with his opinions.  The matter of fact is that software, no matter which company is producing it, has many issues that can be traced down to all of the development phases.  In general properly trained individuals with proper experience do not develop software or the team members and management have different goals.  In most cases the goal is just to get a promotion and raise and move or to a higher position in the same or different company.  Company managers in most cases are not interested in the quality of the product but on making money.  This behavior is so widespread in our country that we have become oblivious to it.  A few months ago the biography of Steve Jobs was published.  When it became available, given the current set of books sitting on my nightstand, study desk and other places I do not wish to mention but most people should be able to infer, I decide to skip.  My wife got the book for her Kindle.  She already finished reading it.  Several times a day I would ask about what she was reading or she would just volunteer comments.  I feel like I read the actual book.  Steve Jobs was not an easygoing person.  He had several traits that I just dislike.  On the other side of the token, Steve was a very passionate person as far as the Apple products and services.  He always set his goals to achieve perfection.  Although that was not possible, Apple products are far superior to Microsoft’s.  This is quite obvious at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN.  On the first floor the Apple store is just across the Microsoft counterpart.  I do not visit the Mall every day, but when I do it calls my attention that the Apple store typically has at least double the amount of customers.  This is how typically taste tests are conducted.  The subject is presented two (2) options and based on statistics, the best tasting food is the one more often selected.  Without a doubt the winner is Apple.  Good job Steve!!!

How to collect and validate requirements for a software product is just one more important part in the software development process.  The same holds true with design, implementation, testing, documentation, etc, etc, etc.  The design aspects, not covered in this blog entry, describe how the software product is designed to cover all the requirements.  Basic design concepts and some techniques used in cloud computing will be described in a future blog.

If you have a comment / question please feel free to leave a message.  I will respond and post it on this website.

The Naïve American

Virtualization, as far as computer technology goes, is currently a hot but not a new topic.  Virtualization was developed in the 1960’s by IBM to allow very expensive main frames to be shared by multiple users.  The reason was simply based on cost.  At the time, it took in the order of several minutes to a few hours to set up programs and associated data.  Today, on all modern computers, we are able to invoke programs with the click of a mouse or by typing in a second or two a command on a console.  Depending on the intended use of the computer, we are able to utilize our personal computers in bursts that may hit close to 100% while remaining most of the time almost idle 0% to 1%.  On Windows you can see this by opening Windows Task Manager and selecting the Performance tab.  As I am writing this blob using MS Word, I can see a few CPU utilization spikes per minute in the order of 3% to 5%.  The rest of the time it is 0% to 1%.  What a waste!  Of course, when I am working developing software or using other more demanding applications than just a word processor, the CPU utilization may be at 100%.  This frequently occurs when I am compiling a program or running tests on software that I am developing.

How could I possibly benefit from using virtualization?  The answer at this point appears to be just to use technology for the sake of technology.  But wait a second.  I do run some applications that need a different operating system and have some applications that make use of some software that interferes with my network functionality when I use it.  By default my machine boots on Windows 7 Professional, but I often have the need to run different flavors of the Linux operating system.  As in the 1960’s, I could serialize my requirements by booting Windows to run Word and Visio while working on documentation.  I would then close the applications and shutdown the operating system.  I could then boot with Ubuntu Linux and do some software development.  By switching back and forth I could meet my needs, but if I run virtualization software I could simultaneously be running Linux and Windows on my machine or properly speaking, on two (2) virtual machines.  I could then switch from one to another with a click on the mouse.  That makes sense!

A couple weeks ago I attended a one-day Microsoft seminar in a hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota.  The location was easy to get to.  The hotel is next to I-494 and France Avenue.  Food and beverages were provided.  The venue was as good as expected when attending a Microsoft sponsored event.

Overall I enjoyed and learned about Microsoft offerings for virtualization.  The presenters had the sense not to trash competitor’s products.  Overall the general consensus was that most offerings provide similar value and are priced somewhat different.  Of course, if you are considering virtualization and your organization is a Microsoft shop, it does make sense to consider Microsoft offerings for virtualization.  In general products from the same vendor tend to play well among each other.

For the most part, attendees appeared to be system administrators.  Some showed various knowledge levels on the presented products.  A few people pick up their belongings during the presentation and headed out.  They did not seem interested with what was presented or the level and depth of the seminar.  I stayed for the morning session and left before picking up lunch box.  The presentations were fast paced and focused on product features and how simple (or complex) it is to get into and use virtualization.

During the first break, I approached one of the presenters and ask why should one use virtualization in the first place.  Apparently this is not a typical question asked by the average attendee.  I am relatively familiar with the concepts and use VM VirtualBox for work and research.  For my simple needs any virtualization tool is quite adequate.  The presenter appeared to be startled at my questions so I continue to fill in by stating that if the applications of interest run on Windows why should I use virtualization at all.  The answer was quite unexpected.  It went something like not all Windows products play well with each other.  For example, if you are using SQL Server you probably do not want to have in the same machine Exchange because those products do not play well with each other.  My initial comments were that virtualization is a way to hide limitations and issues with Microsoft products.  At that point the presenter kind of gave me a nod with his head like if he had successfully answered my question and moved on to listen to a different question specific to a virtualization products from Microsoft.  It was obvious to me that virtualization as used by most system administrators and for what I saw and learned during the presentation, is just a technology pushed by Microsoft to technicians and system administrators that do not appear to understand the concepts and reasons why one would virtualize.

During the next segments it became obvious the overhead incurred by virtualizing a machine and the additional issues that are present when different machines have different and variable loads.  Memory assigned to a virtual machine can cause it to start paging / swapping even though there might be additional free physical memory in the host computer.

In general, hardware is optimized for use by a computer system.  When an array of virtual machines, each with different requirements are hosted on a computer, the performance of the processors / cores / memory caches are affected.  It is true that hardware instructions have been added to the repertoire of processors to help with virtualization, but they work fine when a single virtual machine is used.  The only valid justification for virtualization is to run disparate operating systems on a single computer.  This reduces the amount of space and energy when compared with discrete computers needed to run disparate operating systems.

When you get a change, open Task Manager on your Windows computer, and without running any applications, take a look at the CPU utilization.  Make sure to show kernel times.  Depending on the system and network connections, one may see from around 1% to 5% CPU utilization.  What you see is the operating system overhead.  Utilization grows as applications run.  The additional overhead is due to operating system tasks that are periodically performed.  Notwithstanding the additional overhead when the system gets some basic load, if ten (10) machines are virtualized on a computer, then each virtual machine will be using 1% to 5% of CPU when idle.  If one takes the sum, the hosting hardware will be using about 10% to 50% of the CPU resources supporting idle operating system tasks.  It does not take much to figure out that having compatible applications / servers running on their own sand boxes just to make use of virtualization does not make sense at all.  The software applications / server running directly on a single instance of the OS would have available a considerable amount of resources that are wasted by duplicating OS tasks on each instance of a virtual machine.

By the way, stop for a second and take a look under the CPU Usage for Memory utilization in the Task Manager windows at the amount of memory that each virtual OS is using just by having it running idle.  A Windows 7 system takes over 1 GB of RAM when idle.  In the above example, ten (10) virtual machines will waste 10 to 15 GBs of RAM.  Of course, who cares when most servers hosting virtual machines are configured with 128 or more GBs of random access memory.

Target is big in the Twin Cities area.  The main example of a company that has ripped the benefits of Microsoft virtualization was what Target has done for their stores.  The project to simplify operations and reduce cost was to replace seven (7) computers with two (2) each running seven (7) virtual machines.  The contents of each virtual machine were not covered during the presentation.  Of course, if different software packages requiring different flavors and versions of operating systems were required, then virtualization made sense.  The two (2) physical machines are running a cluster so if one fails the other picks up the entire load.  One has to assume that in the Target example, some virtual machines were running different operating systems (i.e., Linux, Windows) while others were running different Microsoft servers that do not play well when in the same machine.

In conclusion, the use of virtualization just for the sake of virtualization is a performance hindrance to the entire system.  Poor architecture, design and implementation can be hidden to some extent with the use of virtualization, but this comes at the expense of powerful servers when the proper develo0ped software could run directly on a single non-virtual machine with considerably less resources.

One of the main reasons for the proliferation of virtual machines is that most technicians making IT decisions do not have the background or experience needed to evaluate technology and select it only when it provides a benefit to the organization.  Also, you have vendors whose business thrive in making periodic changes and motivating system administrators to keep up with the latest technology just for the sake of it.

The Naïve American

At a high and introductory level, the book provides some good definitions that further open the appetite to pursue more in depth reading on most topics.  Being a system architect, software developer and business owner for over twenty years, and the book did not provide much food for thought.

On several sections, it appears that what is stated on a paragraph might be contradicted on other.  No good rules of thumb are provided.  Perhaps if the book is rewritten to cover better topics in more detail, the book could be useful.

The authors state that predictions, especially in computers and software, have in most (not to say all but the most obvious and simple ones) have proven wrong.  Nevertheless the authors go and make ten predictions.  Some of them might in the future become a reality, but some seem to be quite incredible.  I would suggest for the authors to have followed their own statements and skip predictions.

The book has several pictures and photos that may or may not be what they are touted to be.  Most descriptions of how Google, Facebook and other Cloud vendors operate are based on assumptions.  While reading some of their descriptions about some private data center, the thought occurred to me that I was at a supermarket checkout reading tabloid headlines.  Several sections in the book sounded like a white paper by a vendor trying to convince the reader that if they do not use their product they will never be successful in their business pursuits.

I would not recommend this book.   Hopefully the authors have other good titles which I have not read yet.

The Naïve American