Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

I had been putting together some notes to write a short article about the difficulties with fixed-price software development, but Scott Ambler beat me to it. I just read his excellent piece, entitled “Is Fixed-Price Software Development Unethical?”

It’s sure to spark some controversy. As he mentions, both academia and industry have been trying to figure out how to do this for decades now, and haven’t had much success.

The important thing to note is that he is talking about projects where the scope, schedule and cost are all determined upfront. To the inexperienced, this seems completely reasonable, but anyone who’s done software development for long enough (10+ years) understands the problems with this approach:

1. It is impossible to define a 100% precise scope upfront.
2. The scope always changes. Frequently.
3. Even with a 100% precise, fixed scope, your estimate will likely only have order of magnitude accuracy.
4. Starting with a good estimate, the resources you assign to the project will make a huge difference. (The best software engineers are 10x more productive than average ones.)

These are the major factors (IMHO) that together cause a “perfect storm” of risk and uncertainty. Be sure to read Scott’s article for more points.

So what’s the solution? Do we just give up and stop developing software because it’s too difficult and risky? My next post will focus on better ways to approach software projects.

It’s getting more and more difficult to differentiate between the different types of spam. Just glancing at the last part of subject line, it looked like porn spam.

Subject: Linux bash/perl programmer……….HOT HOT HOT and URGENT

Turns out it was actually recruiter spam.

Body: This is *** from ***.. Please let me know your comfortability ASAP…. I need a guy he must have at least 2 years of experience that his primary job is to write bash or perl script on linux machine.

After several months of development, I’m proud to announce that the Syllogistic Software team has completed its latest product – the Learn PHP Tutorial Video, found at http://www.LearnPHPTutorial.com/

“That’s great,” you say, “but what is PHP?” Glad you asked! PHP is a web programming language. In fact, it’s a web programming language I’ve been using since version 3 was released in 1998. Hard to believe it’s been around for 10 years now.

Since we use PHP on a daily basis to create dynamic web applications for clients, it was only natural for us to produce a training video to help others do the same.

So have a look at the two free sample chapters we’ve posted, and don’t hesitate to pass our link on to anyone you think might find it useful.

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the videos, try out the Support feature on the website. Look forward to hearing what you think!

SPAM email. Everyone hates it. Company and individuals alike have built various systems for dealing with it, but from what I hear, most solutions are sub-optimal.

I currently receive about 365 spam emails per day. 290 in my personal account, and 75 in my work account.

But I hardly ever have to think about this!

That’s because I use hosted Gmail for both my personal and work accounts. Every time a spam email makes it through. I simply check it, and hit the “Report Spam” button. Hundreds of thousands of others do this every day. Then, the Google algorithm goes through and figures out which emails are spam based on this aggregate result.
It ends up being extremely accurate. I’ve only had 2 or 3 false positives* over the past 3 years I’ve used Gmail.

Because of this, I can confidently ignore the spam/junk folder. Gmail saves these messages for 30 days — just in case.

Yet another reason to use hosted Google services…

*A false positive is a legitimate email that gets marked as spam.

Warning: This blog posting will probably make you mad. If your blood pressure rises in correlation with gas prices, stop reading now!

Gas prices have been increasing over the years, and I personally think it’s great! Don’t get me wrong. I have a car, and I love driving, but I also think people (including me) drive way too much.

Why do we drive so much? Because it’s still too cheap! Even with the price more than doubling in the past five years, there are more cars on the road, more drivers, and people driving further distances each day.

Obviously people need to do a certain amount of driving, but it’s the long distance commuters that really confuse me. Apparently they think it’s more economical to travel hundreds of kilometers and spend 3-6 hours in a car every day than to move closer to their workplace.

I think if you added up all of the costs very carefully (including car ownership and lost productivity due to travel time) you’d find this type of commute is actually way more expensive than moving.

Never mind all of the external costs (ie. costs that drivers don’t directly pay) including road maintenance, emergency services, and environmental impact.

Now, I agree there’s no easy solution to this. City planners need to encourage more mixed commercial/residential buildings. They also need to provide better mass transit.

But nobody is going to bother with any of that when it’s just so darn cheap to hop into the car and drive!

Ok, I think I’ve upset enough people by now At least a few others agree with me:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/hurray-for-high-gas-prices/
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto.html