Doing a Little Research

Posted on December 2, 2024 by way0utwest

I’ve been very pleased with the direction of SSMS the last few years. As it’s been separated from SQL Server releases and gets updated more often, I think the changes from v17 though v20 have been improvements. There are still issues, but it’s been better. Now we finally have SSMS moving to a modern shell with the v21 preview and I’m excited to see how this changes the future of our tooling.

However, the PM for SSMS, Erin Stellato, posted a note on LinkedIn recently asking why people don’t read documentation. She also asks what you want to see in 21, so respond if you think there are holes in the SSMS docs. I think this post came about because of many responses that came from people who clearly hadn’t read some documentation.

I find far too often people struggling with different concepts, some of which I know a bit about and some I don’t. However, for those that I don’t, I can often figure out something about it quickly. A combination of Google, following links in those results, and increasingly, asking CoPilot/Some-AI  a question often helps me solve a problem by giving me direction and knowledge. I still have work to do, but it’s a start.

In fact, that’s how I solved a lot of the questions on SQL Server Central in the past. I’d read a question in the forums, I’d research a bit, set up an experiment, test something, and then post an answer. And at times, then getting told my solution didn’t work and figuring something else out or correcting my answer since I’d missed a bit of the context.

These days, I see lots of people struggling and I don’t quite understand why. It seems the art of scoping a problem, doing some research, some experiments, and coming up with a solution relatively quickly isn’t common, but more uncommon. Lots of friends who have colleagues/direct reports say there are plenty of others that don’t have these skills.

I’m curious for those of you willing to share, how do you go about doing some research when something doesn’t work? When you get asked to do something you don’t know how to do, or asked a question you can’t answer, what is your process? Pick a specific example if you can and let us know how you self-educate.

If you struggle to do this, or you post online and expect someone else to help you, I’d encourage you to think about how you can become more self-sufficient and teach yourself, using the resources you have. Your employer will appreciate it and it will help further your career opportunities.

Steve Jones

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Grinding Away: Iris Classon

Posted on December 2, 2024 by way0utwest

Iris Classon is a developer and Microsoft MVP. She has had a lot of success across the last decade plus. This is her second career, deciding in 2011 to leave her profession as a registered clinical dietician to learn to program. Here’s an excerpt of an interview:

“Well, the first few days sucked. I mean—yes, you might want to beep that out. Because our teachers are doing, counting, talking about binaries, and I had forgotten all the math. They’re talking about binary numbers and doing all the calculations. They’re talking about hardware as well, which I didn’t know anything about. I know now, but not then.

I was so frustrated. On the second day, I was like, “I want to go home.” I was kind of upset and stuff, so my teacher drove me home and we had a long chat, and he said, “Iris, come back. We kind of need a personality like that. You just come back. Give it the rest of the week and you’ll see.”

On the third day, when I came back—I did come back—we started programming. We did our first little console application, and I just realized I just got it. I would turn around and look at my classmates. Some of them just seemed confused and I was like, “What is the problem? I mean, this is logic.”

For the first time in my life, I understood what was written.”

Her first year of programming is documented on her site, and it’s a neat read to me. The important thing is to remember she documented this daily during that year. It’s summarized now, but she was grinding away.

What I like about this

This is a story I think shows practically how to improve yourself and get better at something new. I have remembered this story as I tried to learn to coach over the last ten years, and as I continue to work on trying to improve my skills.

This is also in tech, and it gives you a way to look at yourself and try to improve your skills to find a better position, or maybe the position you really want.

What I don’t like about this

Not everyone can take time off to improve for a year, though this is something most of you could do across 3-4 years.

I also don’t want to make it seem like anyone can do this. Everyone has certain genetic gifts, and they are drawn to certain things. Iris clearly is drawn to very logical work and has a gift for programming. Your experience, raw talent, and understanding might not be as good.

You can get better, but you walk your path and you have to remember that. Reading other stories can sometimes feel like I can’t do that. You won’t likely do the same thing, but you can improve yourself a lot of you grind away.

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Republish: Over-Engineering

Posted on November 29, 2024 by way0utwest

It’s Black Friday, and a holiday in the US. I’m off today, no idea what we’re doing, but probably some horse chores and taking it easy.

You get over-engineering as a republish. I realized it was never on this site, so here it is:

Over-Engineering

This editorial was originally published on Jul 15, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is on holiday.

I stumbled upon an old blog post by Neil Davidson that he recycled via Twitter. It was about design and how things bloat. In the post he references another blog by Moishe Lettvin , who worked on the Shutdown menu in Vista. Reading that post, I was amazed to find that 8 people directly and 43 people indirectly contributed to that feature over a year.

Really?

At first I had the amazing response that most people probably have of MS is obviously so (insert your four letter adjective here) blanked-up, no wonder Vista was late. However as I read through the comments, I saw so much disagreement over how the feature works, should work, compares with OS X, and more that I’m not sure so this was a year of development time wasted. (Note I don’t know the man-years spent on this, but I bet it’s > 1).

I haven’t built a lot of software in my career, especially large scale or shrink wrap software, and so perhaps I don’t really understand things. However I do think that we tend to over-engineer too often. I see people that try to design in every contingency, as well as think of every possible places things might go wrong. I have a simple mantra for you folks:

You can’t do it. Get over it and ship something.

It sounds simple, but it’s not. But it’s not necessarily naïve. I’ve seen too many people delay releasing something, trying desperately to get things right. They’re never right. They’re also never done, so you might as well ship something that’s 80% right and then plan on fixing it right away.

I know some people will disagree and say that things should be built right the first time. I don’t think they ever are. They can be built well, but they ought to be built quickly, and with a design that expects changes to be required in  a relatively short time frame after they’re released. This doesn’t work for all software, but I bet it works for a large class of applications that aren’t on the scale of SAP or Windows.

We can learn to code better, build more secure and stable software, but I don’t think we’ll ever cover all the bases. So why try? Build something that works most of the time and then refine it from there.

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A New Word: Nachlophobia

Posted on November 29, 2024 by way0utwest

nachlophobia – n. the fear that your deepest connections with people are ultimately pretty shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial in the moment, an audit of your life would reveal a smattering of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice, or loss.

I don’t have nachlophobia. Maybe in my younger years, but I deeply value connections with those I choose to spend time with. I have learned to make an effort at events to spend significant time with a few people, even if this means I don’t get time with others.

I have no fear that I’m not risking anything; I am. I am truly saddened when my close friends experience pain and joyful for their success.

A few weeks ago at the PASS Summit, I spent an hour sitting in a mostly empty room with a friend, talking about life. We chat periodically, but we don’t see each other enough. It was worth every minute. I also had to go offsite to an event and another friend asked to ride with me. I was grateful for the company and conversation, something I don’t get enough of.

I hope none of you have nachlophobia. If you do, spend time building strong relationships, which are defined by you. It doesn’t matter how others feel about me, it’s about how I feel about them.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

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