The Wayward WebLog : Lunacy

Primal Development Methodology

mattwar — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:40:00 GMT

I am going to tell you something that will disturb you. You might laugh, but it will be a cold uncertain laugh that will haunt you as you read on, because somewhere deep down you'll know it to be true. You might brush it off, get on with your day, yet sometime later, a week or a year, it will seep back in and unsettle you to the core. From that moment on you will be changed. You will think different, act different and will fundamentally be different. So take a moment to prepare yourself now, breath deeply, clear your mind and open up to the possibility that building software is hard. ...(read more)

The Blue Screen of Mort

mattwar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:56:00 GMT

It happened just the other day when I least expected it. No one would have expected it. Not me, not you, not your cousin, your grand-father or your grand-father’s cousin’s dog; no one. Because there was no warning, not even a hint, not a glint or glimmer...(read more)

Agile at Microsoft

mattwar — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:01:00 GMT

I wasn’t always a proponent of Agile development practices. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know what they were. Before I came to Microsoft I used to just do what I was told and simply worked the way everyone else worked....(read more)

Titans of Transparency

mattwar — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 07:37:00 GMT

There seems to be a lot of controversy over the degree or level of transparency shown by internet era corporations. The discussion is over more than just the sound-bites of corporate big-wigs on top of the financial food-chain, it’s about the amount of communication in general from the troops at the bottom. Since the technology today makes it possible, it’s just become expected that everyone open up and start chiming in to the meta-chant that is the modern day blogosphere. The media and its flock tend to ruminate about who posted what when and which audio interview offered the latest tidbit of nauseating insight to some favorite fan-boy product X.

Somewhere, out in the ether is a group think that judges just how transparent any given company is. Are the posts sincere or are they just market-speak? How many bloggers are there? Does the encompassing entity promote the speech or do they surreptitiously squelch it? Are they really trying to be transparent or is it just some overtly ornate orchestration by which the public is periodically pushed into partaking from the pitcher of presweetened Popsicle punch? Would I really have just written that if I were under the thumb of some conspiratorial conglomerate? Would I have written it if I were lucid at all?

Of course not!

And now you have proof that not only is the Wayward the genuine article, the article is in fact genuine. For me Transparency is everything. If you need more proof just take a look at my post count. You can’t get more transparent than that. I’m so transparent, I’m nearly invisible.

With Wayward, what you see is what you get.

Literally.

I could go on, but you’re probably speechless already. I know I am.

Earth Renamed 'Hades'

mattwar — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:38:00 GMT

Apparently Xena was not the only solar body renamed this week by the International Astronomical Union. In an attempt to align all planet and dwarf planet names along the Greek pantheon theme, a group of rather overzealous and somewhat tipsy astronomers packed into the conference's overflow area within the hotel's cocktail lounge agreed unaminously last night that yet another solar body should be renamed, reclassified, and remarketted.

You see, all those silly star-gazers thousands of years ago, too busy to be distracted from watching the sky simply forgot about the one mass of rock beneath their feet.

When asked how they came up with that particular name one recovering astronomer said, "We were having a hell of a time. Do you always lean like that when you ...?"

More on this after we wake someone else up.

But I digress

LINQ Designer Receives Prestigious Award at PDC

mattwar — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 09:36:00 GMT

In the wake and fanfare of the disclosure of the LINQ technology preview at the PDC 2005 in Los Angeles this last week, a member of the LINQ design team was presented with a prestigious award for outstanding achievement above and beyond his peers. Erik Meijer, most known for his antics as "Head in the Box" for VB TV and author of many research and academic papers such as "Programming with Circles, Triangles, Rectangles and other 3rd grade geometry", was surprised to find himself the award’s recipient. “The competition was pretty tough,” he was heard to say as he was lead off stage. “I had no idea I would win this thing. I just knew I had to try.”

I interviewed Erik the next day, sometime past noon when he had recovered from the celebration enough to speak coherently.

Did you ever think that your work on Haskell, VB, C-Omega and now LINQ would culminate in this?

I’m not sure what you mean. Really, that prior work speaks for itself. There’s a lot of crazy stuff in there, even for me. If you lay them out, side by side, you can see each one progressing further and further, each language referring back and forth to each other over time. It’s so Escher.

Speaking of crazy, you’re quite well known for your antics with “Head in the Box” and your wild ideas on programming languages evidenced by your numerous publications. Are these things what drove you toward the achievement last night?

Definitely. Everyone knows I’m a risk taker. I like to do wild and crazy things. Languages are just one of them. It’s like surfing, parasailing or sky-diving, you’ve just got to hang and on a go for it.

Did you always think you had what it takes to be a winner like this?

It’s not something you think about. It’s just something you do. Like when the guys in the data team asked me to help think about querying in programming languages and I didn’t really know what to do, so I just started spouting off about triangles and whatnot, waiting for their eyes to glaze over. That gave me the time to put together a plan. It’s just a skill I have I guess, my competitive side showing through. When everything came around again with LINQ I knew the geometry play would not be enough, so I tossed ‘Monads’ at them like a stun grenade. You should have been there.

What about ‘homomorphic lifting’? You’ve been heard to utter that one on occasion.

Yes, that too. Except that one still works. It’s always good for a laugh. It puts the design team into a tizzy.

So what do you think sealed the win for you last night? Was it your zest for life? Was it your competitiveness?

Well, it definitely had something to do with the large protein shake made from fish guts, liver and insect parts.

Well, there you have it, Erik Meijer, LINQ designer and winner of Universal Studio’s Fear Factor Live. It’s the programming that drove him crazy; crazy enough to be a winner.

N-Tier development with C# 4.0

mattwar — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 06:50:00 GMT

Now that the PDC announcement has been made revealing sessions covering the new C# 3.0 features causing speculation to run rampant, I figured it was time to go ahead and start outlining features of the next product. No reason to be stay focused on the past. It's time to move on and discover what lies ahead.

Too soon, you say? Are you kidding? Of course not. Look, the design staff here has to keep planning far in advance of the development juggernaut. If we were not constantly leaping ahead into product plans n-versions out, the developers might start to think that the ship was drifting off course and that everyone was asleep at the helm. If that ever happened, the negative impact to employee morale would be devastating, sending productivity into the toilet, initiating a downward spiral of fear, uncertainty and drunken binge programming that we might never recover from.

Sure, we’ve squeaked by before without a clear progression of product visions, attempting to ship fledgling one-off’s anyway. You’ve seen the aftermath; tons of ill phrased dialogs, oodles of incoherent error messages, menu items haphazardly placed and the invention of the tool-bar. Fortunately, as a company, we eventually came to our senses. To rectify the problem we instituted a process whereby planning for the next version commenced while the current version was still in production. Put into practice, this seemed to quell the fears emanating from the developers cubbies. It kept them productive and happy; and the products tended to ship more or less on time.

Yet even with that improvement, the company still had a long way to go to perfect the process. You see, while the developers were now content to continue churning out bits, bugs and brochures by the bucket-loads, the designers were quick to point out that they too were consumed by a similar dread; no one was looking ahead to the next, next version. Even as the current next version was successfully congealing in their minds, the lack of a plan for the follow on to the next version caused substantial despair. Design meetings quickly turned into squabbling. If a designer’s favorite feature was not on the table for the next release, then it obviously was never to going happen and we all might as well pack up and go home, or at least go into research. The inability to see beyond the next, next horizon was corrupting the very process by which the morale of the development teams hinged. It did not take a genius to realize that implosion was imminent.

Of course, that’s why we revised the process to include the n-tier development cycle. It requires that design teams stay n-versions ahead of the actual product, usually by dividing up into multiple tiers of overlapping forward-thinking units. Of course, it would be silly to consider staffing up n-teams of thinkers constantly thinking beyond each other. Any team left in the nth position would invariably begin to feel the angst of future uncertainty, the creeping anxiety of doom. So naturally, we would need to devise a structure that would avoid identifying any particular ‘n’. In the end, we chose to form ourselves into a ring of buddy-teams each dedicated to working one version beyond the buddy team to the left.

I’m so giddy to be part of this process. I can hardly imagine working under the old regime. How does the rest of the industry manage to limp along without a clear roadmap ahead?

But I digress

Matt

Outliers

mattwar — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:48:00 GMT

It was there today, again, waiting, watching, sitting idly by while I worked. Sinister. I try to ignore it, hoping it will go away, but it doesn't. It just stays there, flittering away, doing what it does, day in day out. It's anoying. I'd ask for an office without one, but I know what kind of reply I'd get; a vacant stare, a laugh, a wisecrack. They're all comedians.

So I let it be. I pretend its not there. I try to focus back on my work. I'm writing a lot of code and that usually takes my mind off it. Lots of files, lots of lines, fingers doing that rapid dance, like the strumming of a guitar, faster, faster, until the strings meld into one, and then the thump of my thumb as I hit the space bar at the end of a line, end of a thought, the last bit for the moment until I refocus.

And that's when it tricks me. That's when it suckers me in. That's when I come back down from on high and realize its just me in a chair in an office and there are noises and smells and reality demanding my attention. That's when it lures me in, when I break down, when I look. That's when I see it still there, watching me, reminding me, like a clock, ever ticking.

Why won't it say anything? That's the infuriating part. It almost never says anything, even when it has my attention, especially when I'm looking at it, like a pot never boiling. Not until later, for certain. Not until I'm back in the groove, typing away, thoughts flowing freely. Not until I'm about to reach higher ground, burst my bubble of indeptitude and grasp a greater truth.

That's when it finally does, when it speaks, when it flashes its eyes and chimes. The ringing in my ears in the moment that it fades, I can think of nothing else. Something has changed. Something is new. Something in the world beyond me, beyond my room, beyond my meager metaphor of existence has transitioned to a new reality, a far better place. Somewhere a toggle has been flipped, a state has been changed, a metamorphosis occurred, a sparkly newness.

And its herald is beckoning. There is nothing I can do to resist. I must look. I must obey. I must see. It promises enlightenment. It promises truth. It promises fullfilment. I must see it and absorb it, all there is, its very essense, soak it up like a sponge, contemplate it, consume it, regurgitate it, become it.

But then its probably just SPAM.

Matt

No Cowboy Haiku For You

mattwar — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 03:40:00 GMT

Everything always happens when I'm on vacation. I can't take a few weeks off to go snorkelling in the tropics without whidbey beta 2 sneaking out the door and into the eager hands of thousands of awaiting customers, end-users, pointy-haired managers and a flock of P2P traders that have seemingly confused the download as a pirate Doctor Who episode.

And then there's all this pent up interest flooding out onto the net; questions, answers, intellectual debate, goofy anecdotes and cowboy haiku all over this wee little product and a programming language that could. Flooding everywhere, it seems, except here. That's right. The Wayward had been missing the boat. While the rest of the world sailed away on the luxury liner of current events, the Wayward weblog has been completely mum.

I could not believe it either. So I looked into it.

It took a while. The switch over to the new hosting site had me confused for a bit. What I found out scared me to the bone.

All the posts where gone. Nothing was left except posts predating the Mouse competition.

I was shocked.

Needless to say I became panicked. I sent emails out to everyone I could think of. "Where did my posts go?" Not many replied. Most denied the problem. Some put the blame on others. One mistook me for a Peruvian ballet dancer and wanted my phone number. I was getting nowhere.

So I hacked the system. I developed a program that would allow me to send anonymous communications anywhere on the net by taking advantage of the 'unused' bits of undersized packets. This let me transmit commands, bouncing them off compromised gophers sites (there are still a few), and attack the very servers that host this blog. I broke in using a technique not used since the 70's. No one imagined it ever would ever come back into fashion and so no one thought to protect against it; not unlike bell bottom pants.

For days I searched the archives. They had to be there somewhere. They just couldn't vanish could they? Then I had a flashback. It was the 80's and I was into crazy hobbies like stop-motion clay animation. I had spent two days working out a fan-film variation of Mr. Bill. He was on Safari in the jungles of my backyard and unfortunetly got eaten by a giant yellow boa. It was a masterpiece. I imagined the accolades I would receive after sending it out to all the amateur film festivals. But to my chagrin, after getting the developed 8mm reel back from the K-Mart photo desk, I found the segment missing.

Yes, there was the bit with dancing dinosaurs and the scene with the improvised mannequin falling off the roof, splattering all over the pavement. But the segment inbetween, the entire Mr. Bill on Safari, was missing, apparrently clipped out as if the minute and a half never existed.

I didn't even need to guess. I knew the truth. Somewhere there was a K-Mart employee with a 8mm strip of my blood and sweat, showing it to all his friends, wooing women, receiving the awards and being invited to the whitehouse. And somewhere out there is a blogger with my posts, somewhere.

I eventually found an encrypted file with an incriminating title: wayward_posts.xor. I couldn't break the encryption.

Still I was left with some satisfaction. I knew the truth. The only thing left to do was to decide what to do next. For a moment I toyed with the idea of rewriting the posts, each and every one of them. Then reality flooded back. No, not this time. I was not going to relive the past. The future, I realized, was all that really mattered. I decided that I would press on. Invent new topics and post new posts. I would be better than before. More eloquent. More incisive. More legible.

And there wouldn't be any cowboy haiku.

But I digress

Matt 'Wayward' Warren

Seeking Wayward

mattwar — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 21:02:00 GMT

I thought I'd let you all know about the project I've been working on for the last few months that has unfortunately kept me away from what I like to do best. It's the eve of the MSN Search engine release and soon all the world will know what I've been up to. Yes, the engine has been improved, and all that, but there are a few features you most certainly have not read about. There will be extensions, add ons to the main product that will allow you to refine your search beyond anything you've seen before. And yes, as you might have guessed by now, there will be a 'Wayward Search' feature.

The Wayward Weblog is now part of the combined Microsoft Megabase of Knowledge (tm), and it is only searchable by MSN. No other engine may feast upon its delicacies, bath in its brilliance or be lead astray by its vacuous headlines.

In addition, the Wayward Search Engine (tm) will offer a new, innovative way to find the information you're looking for. Years of ~~long lunches~~ analysis have uncovered a method by which even a novice can succeed at expert level queries. The interface is so simple, even an Orangutan could use it. In fact, one did just yesterday during the beta. Instead of text boxes requiring you to type and spell out actual words and such, or even point-and-click links used to refine your area of interest, the Wayward Search Engine (tm) operates off a different principle.

You see, most questions that you'll ever ask have already been asked before, by someone else. In deed, any question of any merit has been asked before by someone more qualified to ask it than you. So it should make you feel rather silly to be sitting at your machine tip-tapping into laughingly small input boxes. In fact, you'd be better off not asking any of your own tedious questions, and be better served by educating yourself on the nature of questions asked by those who actually know what they are doing.

So instead of allowing you to waste your time and ours, we at Wayward have spent a few lucid moments compiling an exhaustive list of the exact bits of information you ought to know. No need to spend any time at all thinking of an intelligent question to ask. We've already thought of it for you. No need to type, point, click or scroll. The answers are presented on the main page of the site, in small print just below the flashing ad for diet pills.

At Wayward, we know what's good for you!

Matt

The Great Big Lie

mattwar — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:13:00 GMT

Now I'm not one to spread conspiracy theories, but I just can't get over the feeling that the people of the USA are being lied too. And its not just by the administration this time, its by a wide body of industrialists, economists, politicians and even scientists working in concert to keep the truth from us. It was not until recent developments in the European Union that I put two-and-two together to realize that we've had the wool pulled over our eyes for so long. Of course, the reason is somewhat obvious. It's all about the almighty dollar, isn't it? And its all about the oil. That's right, oil. It's not hard to imagine that mountains of barrels of crude are at the center of another international scandal.

You see, I feel that I've done my civic duty over the years, reducing my consumption of limited resources, especially cutting back on overuse of fossil fuels. I bought into the whole idea that conservation is good for the planet and that our leaders were diligently working on ways to solve the problem once and for all. I thought we were making progress with all the new car designs, the gas-electric engines and what-not. Heck, I even purchased a hybrid Honda model that purported to achieve 50+ miles per gallon, and while my actual experience has not been so rosy I had been rather pleased with the results until just yesterday when I learned the truth, that we were being lied to, that none the feeble attempts that I thought to be so brilliant where in fact making much difference at all.

The fact is, there is already technology that so dramatically outshines anything our industries have been able to achieve in the last few decades, it makes you wonder if our government had actually known about it all along and has been criminally negligent for not telling us about it, covering it up in some James Bond style master scheme to keep the public unaware, not allowing us to freely choose to switch to this incredible alternative, forcing us to maintain the status quo and keep the oil corporations fat with profit.

As proven just this last week, it is entirely possible and feasible to construct an engine that excels beyond anything we've known before. It is so quantifiably superior as to achieve fuel efficiency at many orders of magnitude greater that anything that has even been allowed to hit the road.

“It works out to something like 1.24 million miles per quarter gallon, which is quite an achievement,” Bonacina said.

You can find the full story here.

Now I really feel justified in driving that SUV.

But I digress. ;-)

Matt.

Refashioning Software

mattwar — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 21:22:00 GMT

In our never ending quest to provide you with better, faster, more powerful products and tools, we some time find it necessary to redo a little of what was done before, to revamp it so-to-speak, to spruce it up, to splash on a new coat of paint and add new life to the old tried-and-true features that just seem to lack the luster of the new fangled frontiers that we foresee for the future as we scrawl upon our whiteboards and plot how the industry will be shaped by our ~~devious~~, ~~conniving~~, forthright innovations.

Sometimes, however, we find the glitter of new graphics insufficient or the haphazard cobbling of incremental features too stifling for the visions we hold of our grand new design. And its at these times that we propose major shifts in the architecture, sea changes if you will, that develop into new corporate directions, coin a plethora of new acronyms and buzzwords and become overtly evangelized by the enormity of our marketing force.

Of course, not all new visions are as groundbreaking as others, and not all are as grandiose or sweeping in their changes. Sometimes even small facets of products undergo independent upheavals that might have otherwise gone unnoticed unless you dared to look. Surely, the designers of these pieces were motivated by the same zeal that drives the big boys to reinvent, recast and reissue their offerings. It's easy to see how they can get caught up in it. It's not as if our modern culture dissuades us from this practice. In fact, we are actually encouraged by the media to remake ourselves, to remodel our lives around ever increasing fickleness in design and fashion. As consumers we have not only come to expect it, we demand it.

Recognizing this trend in human behavior, we at Microsoft have built in the mechanisms of change into the .Net platform right from the beginning. No longer do you have to wait for entire new platforms shifts before major improvements in subsystems and API's can be brought to you by the hard working developers here. You've seen some of this already, those little compiler warnings when you've errantly used a feature that has been redone, remolded into its sparkly newness. That has been our way of alerting you to the fact that the API has been revised, and that if you continue to rely on the old, outdated one, you stand a chance of being caught running code that is now inexcusably out of fashion.

Believe me, this has provided a valuable service to multitudes of ~~shoppers,~~ programmers out there, as evidenced by the tremendous amount of feedback we have received since the shipment of the 1.1 version of the .Net framework. We take this information seriously, so it should come as no surprise that we find it necessary to devise improvements to even the mechanism by which we alert you to changes. As it turns out, many of you found the warnings of feature obsolescence unexpected and abrupt. You felt cheated in not knowing until so late in the cycle, unable to avoid the embarrassing disclosure that your code may no longer be bleeding edge.

So we plan to introduce a new obsoleting mechanism that is more descriptive and will alert you sooner to potential changes, giving you a chance to prepare for future re-alignments that could catch you off guard. The new mechanism still comes in the form of an code attribute that you can use to decorate your own sources, but it has been renamed and moved into a new namespace. There is a new option on the attribute allowing the specification of not only the degree of obsolescence but the time frame by which it should invariably become so. For example, you will now be able to determine precisely how many months into the future that the current code usage will be considered in style and by what degree you will appear foolish for having used it beyond its freshness date.

The next release of the framework will come completely redone using the new mechanism. Each and every class will be outfitted with the new attribute, giving you the information necessary to predict when each individual feature will eventually fall out of favor. The compilers will also change, giving you cumulative feedback on the desirability and estimated fashion sense of your software. There will also be a tool that you can use to run against and rate precompiled modules from other vendors, so you will be able to accurately determine your softwares total degree of compliance and qualify for the new 'Microsoft Seal of Freshness'.

Of course, you will still be able to use the old obsolete, obsoleting attribute in your code, it just won't be as effective as the new design. But don't worry, there will be a compiler warning alerting you to this fact.

But I digress

Matt

Techmongers Unite!

mattwar — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:31:00 GMT

With the political 'hard-bloggers' getting all the press these days (or should I say 'making' the press), it high time we high-techers got our fair shake. I mean, really, who wants to hear anymore about this nonsense. It has become mind-numbingly repetetive. Still, all the action on the web seems to be in the political arena. But what have they got that we haven't got? Antiquated opinions? Holier-than-thou stances from the pulpit? Misguided, misdirected, misapplied logic hidden behind hearsay and sound bites, devised not to inform you, but to play on your emotions? And that's just the candiates. The bloggers are worse, a cacophony of rants, poorly presented, L33T spoken, incredulity. The internet has finally come of age. We've slash-dotted the presidency.

But enough of that. We really should focus back on what we do well. And that's the technology, stupid. It was good enough before, and it can be that way again. We've just got to sexy it up a bit. I'm telling you, the tech-bloggers can be scandalmongers too. It's in us. We can do this. We can bring back the glitz and the glitter.

I'm counting on all of us to pull together. The future of the world is at stake.

We should get together, have coffee, discuss.

But I digress

Matt

Stern Resolve

mattwar — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 04:48:00 GMT

There's been a lot of hubbub lately over which style of sales and marketing will prevail in the ever expanding hyperbole of internet music retail. With sites like Apple's and MSN's new music service offering individual downloads for mere pennies, it makes you wonder how a subscription service will compete. I mean, would you rather own the rights to hold the cellophane wrapped digital bits in your meaty little paws or would you rather pay over and over again each month for the exclusive right to hear your favorite top ten over and over again?

Certainly, I'd rather have the bits. My usage pattern for music just doesn't justify the monthly cost. However, that hasn't stopped me from shelling out ridiculous fees to have droves of slovenly moronic media blasted at me from hundreds of channels, daily, nonstop, from which I invariably choose only the top few programs I deem worthy, and TIVO those to watch later. I pay for the subscription, but again my usage pattern is all wrong. Why do I do it? I don't know.

Certainly, it would advantage me to have a pay as I go TV service. Want to watch this season of Survivor? That's $2.99 Want to add on a few episodes of Red Green, that's discounted this month at 25 cents a show. Much better.

Of course, your usage patterns might vary. Subscription might, after all, be the right thing for you. I can understand that. I'm willing to accept it. This isn't a do-it-my-way-or-the-highway rant. More choice is better.

Still, there is one type of subscription that I just can't fathom, and I just have no means to identify with the people that can make this sort of decision. It makes me queasy just thinking about it. After all, would you pay a monthly fee to hear Howard Stern?

I didn't think so.

Matt

Style is Serious

mattwar — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 05:54:00 GMT

It's been difficult to focus on work lately, let alone find the time to contemplate something worthy of a blog post. The distraction of the presidential race is too compelling. My wife and I are glued to the television, CNN, FOX, MSNBC. I'm starting to have lucid dreams about dastardly swifti-boat word documents. Just make it stop. Just make it stop!

Those of you outside the U.S. probably find all this a bit humorous, but its actually rather serious business. There has been so much media coverage lately and the mood around here is so pro civic duty, I actually spent a few minutes today thinking about who I might vote for in the upcoming election. Generally, I start by making a list of the pros and cons for each candidate, highlighting the ones that most correspond to and diverge from my own personal views, and then I wad it up into a ball and toss it in the waste basket, because when it comes down to it there is only one factor that matters to me any more, and that's style.

It doesn't matter so much what each candidate believes, what programs they are for or against, or their history of executing on them. It doesn't matter what system they are affiliated with or what platform they choose to build upon. It's just about style. A candiate with a good style, easy to understand, direct and to the point gets my vote every time.

I realize you may find this a bit unorthodox, but in my experience bad style is a sure sign of an unfocused mind; sloppiness leads to a whole host of potential problems. So before I punch my chit this November I want to have a few questions answered by both Bush and Kerry. Do you put the open curly on the same line or the next? Do you indent? How many characters? 4? 2? 8?!! Whitespace or tabs?

Style is serious.

But I digress.

Matt