The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘corporate’

SysML, UML, and My Most Ambitious Self

The other day I was at work and my buddy Juicebox and I took a walk around the building. This is a good thing to do when you can’t solve a problem, or the system is down, or you’re going a little nuts.

Juicebox was sharing with me a list that he had made on his phone of all the movies he owned. The list was alphabetized and everything. About halfway through the list I realized it wasn’t him rattling off movies he had memorized, he was reading from a list.

“Wait you wrote all this down?”
“Yeah it was from the other day when I was studying.”

You see, Juicebox, BattleToad (another friend) and I are studying SysML. In the words of Inigo Montoya … “Let me explain … No, there is too much. Let me sum up …”

First came UML, or the Unified Modeling Language. UML, like any other language, has grammar and syntax rules. Unlike the English language, you express yourself with UML via diagrams and pictures. The language is used to help design and explain software (code). Let’s say you work with a bunch of coders, and then you have to explain what you are doing … There’s a chance you will confuse people because you’ll explain something to death or go off on a tangent (favorite hobbies of my coworkers and I).

If you know the rules of drawing, and someone who doesn’t know code knows the rules of drawing, you just draw a picture using this language and wha-la, everyone is wiser for it. Now everyone knows exactly what you’re trying to build.

SysML is Systems Modeling Language. This is an extension of UML (take 1 part UML, add a little dash of … whatever). People thought, “hey this UML is nice – I can explain difficult concepts in a different way … Why are we just using this for code?” And there you have it, SysML is born.

What’s my point?

Today I was reading SysML (borrrrrinngggggg) and I found this bit very interesting (what this sentence is talking about is how you use this high-level language to build languages that are like SysML or UML … only you can modify them to make them specific to your needs like car manufacturing or whatnot):

A language designer will look for a metaclass with some of the characteristics needed to represent the new concept and then add others and, if necessary, remove characteristics that are not required.

I read that and thought, “what an unexpectedly creepy remark.” I think it’s because of the “remove characteristics that are not required” piece. It came to me, “I should write this down and write a short story about this! Some sort of crazy genetics engineer or … Some nutcase who has a bunch of kids … Like a new take on the Island of Dr. Difficult to pronounce last name …”

Then, in a flash of clarity, I realized I would never actually write that. It was just a foolish thought based on my desire to not do homework.

(Pssst. Guess what writing about how I’m not writing is called? Metaprocrastinating! Sorry, I blame the book.)

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Weekly Wacko

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Stackoverflow.com, and Your Co-Workers

There are, I have heard, four personality types. They are based on introvert/extrovert, and action-oriented/analysis-oriented (and where you fall on those scales). It is interesting to think about, and it can be good to think about what you are. By thinking about that you are aware of how you communicate, and how other people around you communicate (and, if you’re so kind and wise, you’ll adapt and cater to their style).

I like to go into meetings, have an agenda, and get to work. That’s very analysis and introvert of me. Someone I work with regularly likes to chit chat about the weekend before getting to work. That’s fine.

It’s interesting to think of these personality types when you go onto forums or message boards online. Take the site stackoverflow.com, for example. This site is up there with Google when it comes to a programmers favorite tools.

Two guys I used to work with, L and J, never wanted to post to the site though. They were afraid that if they posted to the site, their question would be belittled or mocked. There is a definite risk of this happening. Like most online comments, you can get bashed for what in person would only earn you a questioning eyebrow.

Showing that you have done your due diligence (you didn’t just try and fail, you tried, failed, tried a bunch more, looked up stuff online, and still failed) AND formatting your question properly are important.

Even with these things, you will still get some asinine responses though. Which is why I think, in a community’s forum you can see a good representation of your co-workers (i.e. not YouTube comments or the comments after a deliberately comment-inducing story … a lot of those comments are the dredges of humanity).

  • The person who actually answers your question.
  • The “professor” person – the one who points you to some reading material to find the answer on your own.
  • The person who thinks they are being helpful but is just confusing you by saying too much. (Not to be confused with …)
  • The person who has no idea what they are talking about … So they just throw a lot of information out there and hope you get what you need (or maybe they think they are being helpful? It’s hard to tell sometimes.)
  • The person who uses your question as an opportunity to show how smart they are.
  • The person who you can just picture rolling their eyes as they typed their response … they may mock you for asking a bad or “simple” (in their view) question.
  • The person who just wants to argue.

What types did I miss? Feel free to comment … Heck, start a flame war. Is Google better than Apple? Is Apple better than Banana? Heyooo!

If you want to see some impressive nerdiness, check out this post on Stackoverflow … The topic is: “How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?” And you would not below how much thought goes into the responses, and just how many responses there are.

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Congratulations Graduates! Welcome to the Next 40 Years

Graduation … It’s a milestone that is at once happy, and upon further reflection, terrifying.

Let’s say you get yourself a lovely corporate job and you’re reading through orientation information and filling out paperwork and your work offers a lovely savings program. You think to yourself, “I’ve never made much money so … I won’t even notice that I’m missing five percent of my paycheck.” Then you say goodbye to that five percent.

That’s fine – here’s where it gets depressing. The money is put into something which is oriented towards the day you will retire … which is more than forty years away.

Moving on …

There’s a good chance you already know all of this, and possibly more than me. Nevertheless, I am going to write about this (hasn’t everything already been covered anyway? So why not add my voice to the redundant, overdone chorus?). My sister likes to make fun of me for having become very corporate, and I’ve come to realize that she is kind of right. Now to add to my corporate image …

***

First off, congrats on getting a job. I will give three pieces of unwarranted advice.

Piece of advice number one: Expect unwarranted advice. Listen to it anyway.

Piece of advice number two: SSSSSSMILE!

Piece of advice number three: If when you tell people about what you do, you try to make it sound more complicated than it actually is … Stop it. I don’t have a reason for that one, it just annoys me.

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