The challenges in writing good software are many, but the most important issues are summed up best by the following insights:

“Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.” – Alan Kay

“Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Internet is nothing like Shakespeare.”– Blair Houghton

“The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.” – Grady Booch

“Just remember: you’re not a ‘dummy,’ no matter what those computer books claim.The real dummies are the people who–though technically expert–couldn’t design hardware and software that’s usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it.” – Walter Mossberg

“There’s an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone.That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.” – Bjarne Stroustrup

“That’s the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.” – Larry Niven

“A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” – Bill Gates

A new manager walks into his office and, while settling into his new desk, finds 4 envelopes. On one he finds the words “open me first,” and the other three are numbered 1 to 3.

He opens the first envelope and finds a letter from his predecessor saying: “These three envelopes will save you a world of trouble. In case of emergency, please open these envelopes in sequential order; envelope one first, envelope two second, and envelope three third.”

The manager shrugs, puts the envelopes back, and forgets about them.

Six months later, the workers go on strike. The company closes, and is losing money fast.

After a long night negotiating with the union, he remembers the 3 envelopes. So he opens the first one and it says: “Blame me, your predecessor for everything”.

Wonderful idea he thinks, and indeed it works and the crisis comes to its end. His job is saved, and everybody’s happy.

A few months later, another strike hits. He goes to the drawer and opens the second envelope. It reads, “Blame the government for everything”.

It works like a charm, and he breathes a sigh of relief as his job is, once again, saved.

A month later the workers declare another strike. The manager goes to the third envelope and it reads, “Prepare 4 new envelopes”.

…from the Churchdown Parish Magazine:
“Would the Congregation please note that the bowl at the back of the Church, labelled ‘For The Sick’, is for monetary donations only.”

…from The Times:
“A young girl, who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth, was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast-guard spokesman commented, ‘This sort of thing is all too common these days.’ “

…from The Guardian:
“After being charged 20 pounds for a 10 pounds overdraft, 30-year-old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to ‘Yorkshire Bank Plc are Fascist Bastards’. The Bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance by cheque, made out in his new name.”

…from The Derby Abbey Community News:
“We apologise for the error in the last edition, in which we stated that ‘Mr Fred Nicolme is a Defective in the Police Force’. This was a typographical error. We meant of course that Mr Nicolme is a Detective in the Police Farce.”

…from The Guardian concerning a sign seen in a Police canteen in Christchurch, New Zealand:
“Will the person who took a slice of cake from the Commissioner’s Office return it immediately. It is needed as evidence in a poisoning case.”

The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and establishes whether you are qualified to be a “professional”.

Scroll down for the answer. The questions are not that difficult.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?
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The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door.

This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator ?
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Wrong Answer : Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant and close the door.

Correct Answer : Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door.

This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference; all the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?
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Correct Answer : The Elephant. The Elephant is in the refrigerator.

This tests your memory.

OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross. But it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it?
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Correct Answer: You swim across. All the Crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting!

This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

According to Andersen Consulting Worldwide, about 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong. But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Andersen Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four year old.

An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be. The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of “Executives” was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action. Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering.

The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure. After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that “too many people were steering and not enough rowing.” To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to “4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager” and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. “We must give him empowerment and enrichment.” That ought to do it.

The next year the Japanese team won by two miles. The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

30 Signs That Technology Has Taken Over Your Life

1. Your stationery is more cluttered than George Clooney’s address book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you write *is* letterhead.

2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.

3 You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can’t because there isn’t one typewriter in your house — only computers with laser printers.

4. You think of the gadgets in your office as “friends,” but you forget to send your father a birthday card.

5. You disdain people who have low upload speeds.

6. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers –and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers’ questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.

7. You use the phrase “digital compression” in conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.

8. You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase “digital compression.” Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don’t have to explain it.

9. You know Bill Gates’ e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.

10. You stop saying “phone number” and replace it with “voice mail number” since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.

11. You sign Christmas cards by putting your email next to your signature.

12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than “*”.

13. You back up your data every day.

14. Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and you return with a pad for your mouse.

15. You think jokes about being unable to program a BluRay player are stupid.

16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.

17. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.

18. You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot’s phrase “electronic town hall” makes more sense than the term “information superhighway” but you don’t because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts.

19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.

20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.

21. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it’s okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling.

22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a- quarter-and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.

23. Al Gore strikes you as an “intriguing” fellow.

24. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are.

25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.

26. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say “I don’t know” when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.

27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.

28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.

29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better — the track ball or the track *pad*.

30. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don’t use a laptop.

A man was at a theater and he was sprawled out over 3 seats. The usher came by and told the guy to move. The guy mumbled but didn’t answer. He went and got the manager.

The manager said to the man, “Sir, if you don’t move, I’ll call the police to have you removed.”

The guy mumbled, but didn’t answer. The manager called the police and a cop came over.
The cop said to the man, “Hey mister. What’s your name?”
The man said, “Pete.”
The cop asked, “Where ya from, Pete?”
He said, “The balcony.”

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One night, a police officer was staking out a particularly rowdy bar for possible violations of the driving-under-the-influence laws. At closing time, he saw a fellow stumble out of the bar, trip on the curb, and try his keys on five different cars before he finally found his. Then, he sat in the front seat fumbling around with his keys for quite some time. In the meantime, everyone left the bar and drove off. Finally, he started his engine and began to pull away.
The police officer was waiting for him. He stopped the driver and administered a breathalyzer test. The results showed a reading of 0.0. The puzzled officer demanded to know how that could be.

The driver replied, “Tonight, I’m the designated decoy……”

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A frog called the psychic hotline for information about his social life.

The psychic told him, “I see a beautiful woman in your future and she will want to know everything about you. There is a good possibility she will touch your heart.”

“Wow,” said the frog, “Where will I meet her? A dance, a party?”

“No,” said the psychic, “In next semester’s biology class.”

When a man pulled two guns on convenience store clerk Wazir Jiwi and demanded money, Jiwi asked how much he wanted for one of the guns. He said $100, which Jiwi paid him. Then Jiwi offered to buy the second gun. The robber handed it over, grabbed the cash and headed for the exit. But Jiwi had pushed a button under the counter that automatically locked the door. “He turned to me and asked what was going on,” Jiwi says. “I told him to bring the money back and I would let him go. He brought the money back, and I opened the door.”

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“The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.” ? Aldous Huxley

“Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want–you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn’t matter, so long as you move.” ? Ayn Rand, ‘We the Living’

“The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.” ? Steven Johnson, ‘Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation’

Watson’s Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it.

John Kallam graduated with a BA in criminology and entered the US Army. He served for 20 years beginning in the late 1930s. He was an investigator during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, and stayed in Germany for many years organizing civilian police forces in the post-war era. He also wrote numerous books on criminal justice. He retired from military service in the late 1950s at the rank of full colonel.

Returning to Fresno, California, he began teaching criminology at what was then Fresno State College (later to become the California State University, Fresno). His work was well respected, but after about ten years of service, he was called to see the president of the college.

He was informed that he could no longer teach with just a bachelor’s degree. Times were changing, he was told, and the school demanded that faculty members hold a graduate degree. Merely having 20 years of distinguished experience was no longer considered sufficient qualification to teach. All new faculty were being required to hold a doctorate, it was explained, and the school was actually doing him a favour by letting him keep his job by getting ‘only’ a master’s degree.

John enrolled in a summer program at an out of state college. Three months of intensive seminars and then nine months of home study would get him his MA.

On the first day of class, the instructor was taking roll. He stopped when he read John’s name.

“Are you related to the John Kallam who wrote the textbook we’ll be using?” he asked.

“I am the John Kallam who wrote the textbook you’re using,” came the dry response.

BEST SUPPLY CHAIN ZINGERS
Demand forecasters are like Slinkies. They’re not really good for anything, but you still can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

How many supply chain planners does it take to change a light bulb?
None, the light bulbs are late.

If you’re a supplier and you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of delivery dates.

The easiest way to find missing inventory is to place a new purchase order.

There are two theories to getting an accurate forecast. Neither one works.

WINNING MEMO
As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.

BEST EMAIL TO BOSS TO EXPLAIN ABSENCE FROM WORK
“…If it is all the same to you I won’t be coming in to work.
The voices told me to clean all the guns today…”

RESTAURANT EFFICIENCY
Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it. However when the busboy brought out water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket, then I looked around the room and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.
When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, “Why the spoon?”
“Well,” he explained, “the restaurant’s owners hired Anderson Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp all our processes. After several months of statistical analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. This represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are prepared to deal with that contingency, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.
As luck would have it I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare spoon. “I’ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.” I was rather impressed.
I noticed that there was a very thin string hanging out of the waiter’s fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. My curiosity got the better of me and before he walked off, I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?”
“Oh certainly!” he answered, lowering his voice. “Not everyone is as observant as you. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom.” “How so?” “See,” he continued, “by tying this string to the tip of your ‘you know’, we can pull it out over the urinal without touching it and that way eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent.”
“After you get it out, how do you put it back?”
“Well,” he whispered, lowering his voice even further, “I don’t know about the others, but I use the spoon.”

ONE FROM THE GOOD THINKING DEPT.
A Japanese soap manufacturing company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a box of soap that was empty.

Management tasked its engineers to solve the problem permanently to avoid any recurrence. The engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast.

A rank-and-file employee that was posed the same problem came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.