devmorgan.com

*buzz*

Off goes my cell phone again with another text message.

I have an addiction. My addiction is to data, to communication, to the internet, to technology. This is not uncommon for people that are in the computing industry. The real question is how dangerous is this addiction? The ways we socially interact have changed. We connect in a virtual space, on a virtual medium all the time now. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but it is what it is.

I am apart of the iGeneration. We are wired, connected, and on the tubes constantly. I got into a discussion with my mother the other day about packing. I basically told her that the only things I must make sure I bring on a trip are my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, and my laptop bag.

To be fair, a quick glance inside my laptop bag includes these items:

• Wacom intuos tablet
• Garmin nuvi 350 GPS
• PowerShot SD630
• Thinkpad T60p
• A bunch of power adapters

This is what I consider essential to my being. Notice how I didn’t mention clothing. That was not a mistake. While having clothes is nice - I don’t feel that I need to have them packed, since I can purchase them if I forget anything. Yes. I travel with clothes, I just don’t get worked up if I forget a pair of socks or a shirt. The point I guess is that more then half of what I really care about when traveling is technology… ways to stay connected.

This is hyperconnection. A reliance on the technologies that keep the world connected. As a people, our world has changed, and some of us have latched on to all the technology and can’t let go. We must have our instant gratification technologies… We tweet, we facebook, we instant message, we subscribe, we text. We do all of these things and this is what life is for us: Technology, Communication and Information.

Try this: How many times do you check your cell phone a day? How many times do you check social network? How often do you check your Google Reader? E-mail?

How do you feel when you are without one or all of your technologies? Do you feel like something is missing? Do you feel perfectly fine? If the former, you might be hyperconnected. Don’t worry. Being hyperconnected isn’t necessarily a bad thing. By it’s nature you are accustom to digesting massive amounts of information quickly. You tend to be more in tune with recent happenings of your areas of interest. You are also usually in touch with more people in your social network then others. The quality of the relationship may not be as great, but you are certainly more aware of recent updates then others.

What do we lose when we are hyperconnected? The short of the answer is fullness. We become masters of the connection, but not the node. While we might be able to accept more information in a shorter time, we have less time to really process all of that information. Think wider not deeper. While still connected to your social network - how much value is in every relationship you have? I try hard to keep meaningful relationships with everyone that is in my social network, but the truth is I only have a few good friends, but hundreds of acquaintances. Sure - if I run into someone at a party, I’ll be able to make conversation, but I won’t be able to hold much more then that. Of course, if someone asks me about someone in my social network - I might have a remarkable amount of information about that connection.

This concept has been running through my head for years now, and I hope that I will find more time to write about it. I gave a talk at BarCampRochester3 and received a lot of feedback talking about just the differences in the generation gap between e-mail and instant messaging. This topic is ripe for discussion, and I hope to continue it. Let me know!

Are you Hyperconnected?

I guess one of the upsides to being on the west coast is you are up late enough to hear these stories BEFORE you goto bed.

George Carlin has passed away. (Link 1, 2, 3, 4)

George Carlin was the comedian that got me to like stand up. I still remember seeing some of his early HBO specials on VHS tapes when I was younger. I still consider him one of my favorite comedians, and always had a hearty laugh when I heard his jokes.

He was real, to the point, and not afraid of offending. Although crass, he is one of the few comedians that could bridge the generational gap. Both my parents and I found him funny. This world has lost a great comedian.

Rest In Peace Mr. Carlin.

It’s strange really. I never liked traveling anywhere when I was younger. In the past few years, I have traveled from coast to coast and enjoyed it. Sure, business travelers probably have a lot more experience than me, but, I wanted to share some advice that has made my traveling experiences much better.

Don’t travel with annoying people

For me, this means, don’t travel with family. I figured out after I got older that the reason I didn’t like traveling is because I traveled with family. Sure, I love my family, but, wow, being forced to spend X hours with them can get a little frustrating. This applies for all people that might rub you the wrong way. If you have a friend, but you don’t get along that great, it might not be the best idea to be stuck traveling with them.

Travel with a Friend

If you can, it is always fun to have someone to travel with. A good friend is a good choice. I have taken several trips with girlfriends, and I have taken several trips with friends from college. Usually things go great, and it’s always nice to have someone to hang out with. Only thing to keep in mind is to make sure you have plenty of opportunity to chill and do your own thing, it’s never fun feeling like you have to entertain someone when you don’t want to.

Talk with people

Meeting people is one of the most exciting things to do when traveling. I personally like chatting with business people on planes. Don’t be too talkative, but say hi, and ask where they are headed. Business or pleasure? Travel much? Ask a few small questions, if they seem like they enjoy chatting, keep talking, otherwise, put on your iPod. I met 3 distinctly interesting people in my trip to Cincinnati last week, and it wasn’t hard to do. I had a good time, and I think they enjoyed the conversation as well. Good stuff.

Make sure you won’t panic

The only other thing that has made traveling easy for me is knowing that if everything goes wrong, I’ll be ok. I usually make sure I have plenty of money in my checking account and my credit card paid off before traveling. If my car breaks down, I can pay to have it be repaired, or I can rent a new one. If my flight gets screwed up, I can buy a new ticket. Forgot my socks? Buy new ones. Knowing that you can cover any unexpected expenses and events helps in making sure you have a good time because you are less worried about them. Make sure your schedule is loose enough that if you are running late to something, you won’t be in trouble. The biggest problem I had with traveling with family is that my mother always schedules 500 things to do, and usually runs late to all of them… stressing herself and everyone else out. Remember to relax and enjoy traveling, not many people get to do it.

So. In an attempt to keep myself occupied today during layovers and waiting in the airport, I’ll write about my graduation.

Why not, right?

So, I graduated… again. Of course, in true style, I still am not actually done with my grad degree. I still have a couple independent studies ahead of me and my capstone project. Alas this is nothing new, as I also “graduated” my undergrad degree early as well.

Anyway, I hate graduations. Why? Let me count the ways:

1. You have to say goodbye to friends.
2. You (usually) have to move.
3. You have to start thinking about the future.

Saying goodbye is never fun. A friend of mine wrote a note in facebook, asking the question: “Who would willingly spend several years of their life building a new group of friends and family in a place far away from home, and then at the end of those years, leave?” It’s a good question. I know the chances of seeing a lot of the people I saw every day ever again is quite low. Now it’s easier than ever to keep in touch, but like my old roommate, sometimes communication completely breaks down. It’s a damn shame, but it’s apart of life.

Moving sucks. Lets put that out there right now. In the past 2 years, I’ve moved six times. Six. Friggin. Times. Moving gives you some time to be nostalgic, going through the stuff in your life as you pack it all up. This time while packing up, I was remembering the parties and fun that had happened at the apartment… something that will not likely occur again to the same scope or scale. Oh well.

Now, I know we are supposed to think about our futures before we are walking across the stage for graduation, but once you shake the hands - its official (almost), you have to get a real job. I know in the fall I will be going back to StormFrog, but it’s always scary thinking about where you want to end up. Do I really want to be a code monkey all my life? Do I want to become more ‘business-y’ even if it means more money? Do I still want to end up in Boston? Who knows.

Well. Flight is about ready to board. Maybe I’ll write more or draw a comic on a layover.

So, I guess I will preface this by saying it may offend some people. I apologize now, but this is something that I really didn’t think I would have to deal with in this day and age.

I guess I should be giving some grounding to all of this, I am an Agnostic. I was raised Roman Catholic, but moved away from that faith when I was in high school, much to the initial dismay of my parents. I believe the word my mother used to describe me was “Satanist” (which, I am not, nor ever will be a worshiper of Satan. In fact, contrary to popular belief, not believing in Christ does NOT make you a Satanist). My religious belief change was not really much of a factor on the people a hung out with. In fact, few of my girlfriends minded, and most of my friends didn’t seem to mind either. In fact, they usually asked me why I became Agnostic… to which I promptly replied “I learned about other religions”.

Now, I should probably clear something up right now. A person’s beliefs are different then a person’s religion. You can believe that Jesus or Mohammad were good people, and their teachings were (in general) good for human kind, and not be Christian of Muslim. Religion is the social structure that is built around particular beliefs. This structure is almost never necessary, but it allows people to be able to unite and say “I am Hindu”, and be able to make certain assumptions about their lifestyle and beliefs because they become standardized in this social structure.

This is why I can say I am an Agnostic (while Agnosticism is not a religion, the word can be used in similar contexts). With that term, you learn some things about me. You can make the assumption that I believe it is impossible to know if there is a God, or if there isn’t. You can also determine that I believe that there is no earthly way for us to ever know if a God exists. You also learn that this flips both ways, because this also means there is no way to prove there is not a God either. If Agnosticism were a religion, you would also be able to derive some inherent moral code from my belief, but it’s not.… anyway, enough about Agnosticism, I could go on for hours.

So, why am I even bringing up religion? When I first got to college, religion wasn’t even an issue for me. It just never really played a role. Well, over the past 6-8 months, several people I have hung out with, met, and socialized with have been religious, and with that, there has come some issues. The girl that I am dating now identifies herself as a Christian. To me, and to her, our religious differences is not a big deal. Unfortunately, this is not always shared by people around her. Yesterday, I had met a friend of hers that she was staying with for the week. After I had left, and Jess had come back from the trip we took yesterday, her friend asked her if I was a Christian. Jess replied that I was an Agnostic. The response (which Jess later revealed) was appalling to me:

Oh Jess, don’t worry. We’ll find you a nice, Christian boy one of these days.

I almost threw up in my mouth after hearing this. I was mad, upset and angry. It is appalling to hear something like this, but it doesn’t surprise me. The problem with religious people, is they don’t understand differences. I have asked people who are very religious about what other religions they have studied. I am usually amused when a Lutheran replies “Oh, I’ve studied lots of religions. Catholicism, Baptism, and Orthodox Christianity”. Right. Lots of religions. For those of you who didn’t notice, those are all essentially the same belief system, just different social structure around each of them. If you want to get mad because I just called Catholics essentially the same as Lutherans, go for it, but only after you study Judaism, Islam (edited for clarity: the Abrahmaic religions), Hinduism (edited for clarity: a non-Abrahamic religion), and a few other non-Abrahamic religions.

It’s so troubling for me to believe that even in America, people don’t understand that difference is good. We see it all the time though, families getting upset if a child marries inter-racially, or outside of their class. Religion is just another social element that is around to for people to become bias against. I firmly believe that if people were to actually study the beliefs and religion of others, they would become more tolerant to other belief systems. Religious tolerance does not mean that you believe that other religions are total truth, but that you can accept that other religions can have legitimate belief systems, even though they are different then your own.

It makes me sad, that people can dismiss others as insignificant based on a difference of religious belief. Religion brings to the table certain elements that some people want, and others don’t. This is how someone can choose a religion (which I highly recommend, over inheriting a religion from your family). The worst thing that someone can do is merely accept the religion they have as total truth without at least understanding that there are differences out there, and they aren’t evil.

So, at last I will get to my point: Religious intolerance is dumb. People that perpetrate the intolerance are usually uninformed about what they are being intolerant towards. There is absolutely no more evidence that your religion is better then their religion. So please, go out, and learn about other religions. Understand why people believe what they believe. What makes their religion attractive? What are parallels you can draw between the religions you study and your own? Knowledge is power.

I have been scheduling a bunch of flights for this summer.  This morning, I just scheduled one through US Airways because I had a flight voucher for them. I checked their website and discovered the voucher ($300) would cover the entire flight for me to travel to Dayton. So, as per the rules of the voucher, I made a call to their telephone reservation number.

I wasn’t even put on hold, and I got a real live person. That was refreshing.

So, I let the woman know what day I wanted to fly out, and I was flexible about the times of departing and leaving. I had the web window open so I could see all the prices, but I wanted to have her pick the flight. Perhaps I would get something cheaper then what was shown to me.

“Flight 7245 departing Rochester at 10:15am”. I gulped, knowing that the flight she mentioned was the most expensive on the list I saw.

“Flight 7745 departing Dayton at 6:10am”. I gulped again, knowing that was the second most expensive I saw in the list.

I held my breath as she “checked the prices”. There would be a difference in cost from my voucher of $734.

Yeah, right.

“I’m sorry, but that is not acceptable. I know for a fact I can get it cheaper on your website.”

“Ok sir, let me try again.”

I let her try again, this time the difference in cost was about $300. I told her no again, and now I let her know I could see all the flights and costs, and listed off the flights I would like.

“Ah sir! Much cheaper! It looks like you can get this trip for free!”

“Awesome. I’d like to book it please.”

So. The moral of the story. Telephone reservations suck. Chances are they are going to give you the most expensive flights possible, so make sure you have the web interface in front of you with the lower cost flights… or at very least know the flight numbers you want to be on.

Alright, here comes a rant. Sorry about this, but tutoring a student in PHP is painful. In fact, it’s not just PHP, but I am using PHP as an example.

Don’t get me wrong, I love PHP, but there is a single reason why tutoring people in it is so hard. The people.

People can need help with various technologies, and that’s fine. In fact, I really adore helping someone that knows how to program with a small problem. The problem with PHP is, most of the people that require assistance, don’t know how to program.

Setting people up for failure

PHP is used in the multimedia / web realm here at RIT. Sure, it’s used in database as well, but I rarely get asked for assistance from database students on how to use PHP, and when I do, it is more of a technical issue. The problem is, most students that focus in multimedia / web are not programmers. In the Information Technology program at RIT, you are required to take 3 courses in Java. Once you complete these courses, it is relatively easy to avoid programming in most of your courses for the rest of your tenure here. Students that did poorly in Java tend to go towards multimedia / web because it is easy. You can get away with almost no programming (writing HTML is not programming), and you are not forced to push yourself constantly when it comes to programming.

Enter PHP. As students hit the mid level courses, after trying to avoid programming for a long time, they have a new paradigm, stateless programming. Each time you post to a page, you lose all the data from the last page (unless you pass it along through POST or GET). Students struggle. Constantly, I have to work through basic programming concepts, and these frustrations are made worse by the lack of understanding of the state problem. Combine these weaknesses with a grasp of simple programming with the introduction of a database (which happens in some mid-level courses) only having phpMyAdmin as a guide, and students begin to drop like flies.

What is the problem?

Students pass the initial Java courses, and they are expected to be programmers. Unfortunately they aren’t. In fact, I know first hand that many students that finish the last course in Java couldn’t program anything remotely complicated if they were required to. Beyond this, with a weak foundation, they can not easily grasp another language. They never learned what makes a good programmer, and spend most of their time shotgunning their way through. Professors in later courses never cover the foundations again, and students get lost.

How do we solve it?

I suppose if I had a say, the Information Technology department would be much smaller. What it really comes down to is, students should be flunked in the early Java classes if they are not solid programmers. Yes, it’s a mean thing to say, but if you can not be solid at the core concepts, you are going to be struggling for the rest of your career. Programming is a major part of Information Technology. I will make a claim now that goes against what many of the “higher ups” in the department think, and what they would hate for me to say…

If you can not program, you will not be successful.

I admit, there are likely some people that couldn’t program their way out of a paper bag that are successful in the IT industry, but this is rare, and partly dependent on the definition of ’success’. Someone that gets a job isn’t necessarily successful (my definition may differ from others on this point). However, someone that can be innovative and inventive in the industry is what I would consider to be successful, and frankly, I can not see someone that can meet my criteria for success in IT without being at least a ‘decent’ programmer.

Whole rant aside, I want to make it clear that just because someone is in the IT program here at RIT, and focusing in multimedia / web, it doesn’t make them a slacker or bad at programming, because the concentration is, as with life, what you make of it.

Today was the day. May 3rd, 2008. RIT would open it’s doors to the community, and then some, to show off over 400 exhibits and presentations about what makes RIT an “innovation university”.

Sure. I like the concept. Lets get a lot of people to campus and show off all of our cool stuff. Show that while we are immensely technical and artistic, we can learn how to combined the two. RIT has something that more ‘prestigious’ universities such as Yale, MIT, or Harvard will never have… practicality. Students here are well trained (at least in the fields I am closest with) in how to make things happen. We have the theoretical background, but we don’t spend so much time in it that it takes away from the practical application. This is where me and President Destler disagree with how the university should be going, but I really do believe the idea behind Imagine RIT is a good one. Lets show off what we can do.

Now ideas are one thing, implementation is always something very different (again, another practical versus theoretical argument). I really do believe RIT did the best we could to make this event go awesome, but I’ll be honest, I only saw one or two things today that really made me go “wow. this is cool.” Sure, I didn’t see everything, in fact I was very upset that I missed out a fairly large portion of presentations, including missing Dan’s booth about The College Blog Network, but there still wasn’t much that was amazing with what I did see.

Maybe I am just the wrong demographic? Maybe since I get to see all the interesting technical things anyway, they aren’t that exciting to me? It’s possible. I do think that Imagine RIT is a good thing for RIT, but I don’t believe that it is something that is going to be as big as they want it to be… at least not yet.

So, I guess overall, I commend RIT for attempting to do something that will make us ‘prestigious’ and have us become the ‘innovation university’ that President Destler longs for us to be, but I don’t think today was really worth all the money and the resources that I know were poured into it.

This weekend I went to a concert here on campus, it featured Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. I am actually a fan of both bands, so I was very happy to go and see them. Overall the show was amazing, and it really made me think about the concept of energy.

Energy is exactly what myself and many of my classmates are going to need over the next couple weeks. As the quarter starts to come to an end, coursework and stress levels begin to rise. When I was at the concert, I was noticing two different kinds of energy coming from Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. Paramore’s energy clearly comes from their performance capability. Moving around on stage, feeling the music and looking the part. Jimmy Eat World’s energy was different. They had less of the charisma, but the energy came from the music. You could feel the energy with each beat, and they were able to sound the part. To be honest, at the end of the show, I felt energized. It made me feel like I can make it through the next few weeks. Kinda cliche, but it was a great feeling.

So, the real question is, how do you keep this energy? How does one make it through the stress of the end of the quarter, and even worse, the end of the last quarter. I have never really figured it out. I usually start burning out at the very end no matter what I try. I have had some good ideas to make it through the crunch time, but I think the best thing you can do is remember to relax. Replenish your energy when you can. If that means going out to a concert, do it. If it means having a few drinks with friends on Thursday night, do it. Making it through with a healthy mind is far more important than grades.

At least, that’s what I say now. Lets see if I am saying the same thing when week 10 rolls around, and I end up like last quarter, sick with the flu, having chills and barely being able to remain coherent, but still coding for a final project.

For the last several months, I have been a programming and database tutor here at RIT in the Information Technology department. I have seen many students come and go for help, with varying levels of skill and motivation when it comes to programming.

I hate to say it, but I usually find my self disappointed in some students. I have been trying to figure out why they struggle with programming so much, and I want to try to help them get past the roadblock they are having… I have determined that one of the biggest roadblocks that students run into is having a profound lack of attention to detail and no patience.

Many times I get asked a question that could really be answered if someone just took some time to look at the code in detail, or think through a concept fully. I believe that people are fully capable of logical thought, so just taking some time is all that is really needed.

Step 1: Determine the problem you are trying to solve.

Even at the low academic level, you are programming for a reason. Before being able to code anything of value, you need to be able to abstract the fundamental essence of what it is you are trying to accomplish. If you are writing a program that will calculate area of shapes, that is one paradigm, another is connecting to a database. You must tune your brain to the frequency of the problem, and attack it from there.

Step 2: Develop a plan

Over the past few years, I have determined, I am not one to spend lots of time on design. In fact, I find that most design methodologies are too much overhead or too optimistic. I do however believe that you must always have a plan for what you are doing. A complex UML diagram is not needed, but a simple “WTF Napkin-gram” should usually suffice. Sure, part of this post is about detail, but the detail is most important in the code, not in the plan (this is my opinion… methodologists will wholeheartedly disagree).

Step 3: Code, and follow the plan

Here is where things start to go awry, and this is where I want to focus on a few key problems that I run in to.

People tend to write code blindly. You need to think about what you are writing. Every line should have purpose, and should be directly trying to accomplish the goals in your plan. Every line of code that you write that deviates from that plan is code that is considered ‘junk’. Look at the documentation for your language, and make sure you are not reinventing the wheel, but more importantly, understand what each function call you make does. Does it return a specialized object that behaves in a certain way? What are the bounds of your parameters? Take the time you need to make sure you understand each piece of what you write.

Focus on the error messages. A lot of the problems that I get asked to help with are (relatively) simple compile/syntax errors. Every language has some way that it can get these error messages to you, use them! This is where your attention to detail really comes in handy. You can look at a block of code and see things you might have missed, incomplete statements, and most common (but not always an error) incorrectly named variables. Make sure you understand the code you are touching, and be very explicit in fixing problems with it. Don’t shotgun debug, be precise about what you are trying to do,

Copying code is a bad idea… usually. This is one I am guilty of, in fact, most programmers are. There are several major flaws you need to worry about when you notice yourself copying code. The first problem is the most obvious, if you can copy code, there is a chance that the branch of code you are copying should be in a reusable function. Look at the code, see if you can abstract it to be a function call, and if so, do it! The second major problem with copying code is that its extremely easy to miss any changes you need to make to the code. For example, if you copy a few lines that are modifying variable xmlDoc, and you want the copied code to modify xslDoc, you might miss a change in going from xmlDoc to xslDoc. Happens all the time… so be careful. The third major point I want to touch on with copying code is this: I don’t recommend copying more then 3-5 lines of code at a time from another project. Be sure that you actually need the code you are copying. If you just grab an entire class file, you will likely need to change it enough that it might be a safer bet to just rewrite it… of course on that note…

Don’t reinvent the wheel. If code exists that does what you need, use it. In academia it is a little different, since we are trying to build up core concepts, but, in reality, if it has been done, you likely do not need to do it again. Many people could go on for hours about how important it is that programmers be lazy. I agree, programmers need to be lazy so they can see the way they can save time while coding, but remember that programmers also need to be proactive. You need to be able to spend time looking at documentation, and just playing with existing code to see what is already out there. Save yourself a headache later by taking some time to discover things now.

Program for programming’s sake. I guess this will be my last big point. A lot of people only code because they have to. Sure, this stuff isn’t for everyone, but if you want to be a good programmer, you need to do it a lot. Practice is how you begin to learn all the documentation, and all the tricks about a certain language (To Students: Yes, that is why I know where everything is in the javadocs). Really, the best thing I can recommend is to come up with a pet project, and do it. If it suits, trash the code and write it from scratch after you work out the initial kinks and know the problems you will run in to. The more you code, the better you will become.

These are only a FEW tips for becoming a good programmer. They are just some of the big issues that I see on a day to day basis with students here.