State of the profession

Dick M asks if we (Office developers) are a dying breed. At least I think he’s asking - he could be telling us our profession is wilting away. Whatever, I agree. Completely.

Office developer, Excel developer, business developer, these mean pretty much the same thing to me, its a person nearer the business than a traditional IS department dev. They probably use a range of tools/platforms, they mainly target desktop rather than server, Excel usually features as at least part of the interface (or calc engine), source data may be from a server database, but working data is likely to be in jet. Glue code may be VB6 or .net but most likely VBA. The best differentiators (from mainstream devs) are around business acumen rather than technical tool choice.

Anyway Dick mentions a few items, here are my thoughts:

Value for work - Bad and getting worse, its getting so only City institutions understand the value of Excel, which is bizarre considering their normal sheep like tendencies. ( I suppose they are flocking round each other).

Respect - Bad and getting worse, for years I was embarrassed to admit I did a lot of work in Excel, as ‘real devs don’t touch Excel - hobbyists only’. Then as Eusprig gathered momentum I got a bit more confident, but I think that quality/error movement has stalled a little now. So back to claiming to be a mainstream dev for me I reckon.

Continuity - Bad and getting worse, I used to coach client staff in what I was doing in Excel/Access/VBA etc. These days they turn their noses up, happy to pick up some SQL or C# but no Excel/VBA thank you. I just don’t see many people rushing into our technologies.

Conclusion - yeah we’re proper fooked. Unless MS are going to wake up to their most valuable asset - MS Office on an MS Windows desktop. By wake up I mean the hand in pocket wake up, not the cheap soundbite one thats been (pointlessly) running (well walking) for as long as I can remember.

I don’t think us devs will be the losers we’ll just move to techs where the opportunities are better. The real losers will be MS as customers move to other platforms that have an apparently better cost/benefit story, but only because they are unaware of much of the benefit of the MS Office platform. [Ignoring for the time being the cost/no benefit fubar known as the 2007 UI shuffle]

The other losers of course will be businesses far and wide that have to wait for their IS departments to implement their grossly over engineered, over priced, over due, big iron monsters, just in time to realise the business requirement has moved on.

The winners are of course the IS departments who gain control, power and loads of low pressure work. If you know you will release straight into retirement (rather than production) there are lots of unpleasant things you can forgo, like testing, and documentation for example.

Is this how you see things?

or are you seeing different trends?

How do you think things will pan out in 3-5 years?

Do you have an escape plan?

Please comment here or on Dicks post

cheers

Simon

Excel consulting firms

Where are they?
Where are the multi person Excel, or other spreadsheet, consulting/development firms?
If this technology is as important and useful as we think it is, and its hardly new (mature I think is the correct terminology (one step before legacy)), then why aren’t there more/any 10/20/100/200 person specialist firms?
Sharepoint has them, why not us?
(Is it because that is a ‘professional’ tech and Excel isn’t?;-))
Its like Excel dev is locked in the artisan phase and never going to move towards a more ‘engineered’ approach.
I’m not overly worried from a quality POV as I think if you get the right artisan you will get quality far beyond some tick list based ‘way’.
Its credibility that worries me, I think a few formalised big consulting firm standards would give the whole market a bit more clout. Even if they did conflict massively.
So where are they, and why aren’t there more?
cheers
Simon

First thing

Whats the very first thing you look at/for when you open a workbook from someone else? (that you trust not to be malicious)

And whats the first thing you look at/for when looking at someone elses code?

For spreadsheets its neatness/layout of whatever opens
too neat = gold plating/time wasting
too scruffy = slack/ little care

(Of course the ‘correct’ level of neatness is the sort of stuff I produce ;-)). I’m thinking use of formatting, use of number formatting, use of space etc.

I’d like to pretend thats its some kind of rational measure (file properties maybe?), but really its just a judgement on the initial visual appeal.

For (VB/VBA) code it is Option Explicit - missing = cowboy everytime. If its a snippet/function then I look to see if parameters variables and return are typed (as in Dim … as …., rather than dim x, y, z)

What about you?
one only for each category.
And is it relative to your own work? or do you think its an absolute measure?
cheers
Simon

I think they mean us

Guerilla IT

How to love your superusers!

The article is a bit more related to sys admin type stuff, and thinly veiled sales pitches, rather than deep and dirty Office dev. But I like the principle - instead of IS battling against the power users, support them and encourage them - same effort, much better outcome for everyone.

Of course, back in the real world there is the small matter of something called FEAR…

I have worked at the odd place that worked this way and supported and encouraged those users pushing the limits. But most places are some way off I reckon.

Anyone else worked somewhere where IS encouraged them, or are we all brow beaten into submission daily?

cheers

Simon

Consistency

important or overrated?

I think I am gradually getting more consistent in more things as time goes on and I find ways of doing stuff that I think are the best in the circumstances.

But every project is different and in many I will do a similar operation in different ways. Sometimes because I am searching for a ‘best’ way. Often because I forgot I already solved this in a previous project (even with the nagging deja vu). Sometimes I know I solved it before but can’t find the right project.

I do have tons of library code that finds its way into nearly all my projects, for managing Excel, managing Essbase, menus, common constants, ADO, logging etc.

I am thinking things like working with certain types of list, managing application state etc. Stuff that is not totally general but is in 1 in 3 projects or something. And I mean consistent across projects, not within one.

When I work with other peoples work if I find the same thing solved is many different ways in the same project I would probably start to worry. But if I got 2 projects and one used the app.rows approach and the other used the used range intersection approach it wouldn’t bother me as being inconsistent, would it bother you?

I think some consistency is handy enough, but overall I think it could be a little overrated, especially if we are constantly learning.

What do you think?

how consistent do you think you are (beyond library code stuff)?

cheers

Simon

Slack

[Not the Yorkshire meaning!]

Dick over on DDOE has recently done a post on investment analysis. His basic premise being that ‘lean’ companies may make better preforming investments.

In his excellent book ‘Slack’, Tom DeMarco almost goes the opposite way.

TDMs view is that these lean companies that have stripped the middle management layer back to the bone have made a huge blunder. His view is that this much maligned middle tier is where all the creativity happens, where great new ways of working are invented, where new products or services are imagined. Having a little slack in the business gives people the space to create.

Its a compelling argument, and the book is well worth the couple of hours it takes to read.

I certainly think it holds true in SW dev (for me at least!) - when I’m under massive pressure I just do what I know works, when I have a bit of time I try and find a better way.

Do you think the middle management layer in orgs is/was important? or just a bunch of fat cats with mid level company cars (and cheap suits)?

And do you think that less pressure or more pressure results in the best quality work?

Have you read Slack? what did you think?

Cheers

Simon

Software developers are patronising

I just switched on my pc and went and brewed up. It turned itself off - thanks.

I read some software developer guidelines years ago that the default action of any dialog should be to leave the computer as is. Great! that saves idiots from accidentally destroying their computer. But it also means the default action is to ignore the users request. That seems pretty dumb/arrogant to me.

The Apple approach (as I understand it) is to let the user do whatever they want, but make it easy to undo. That seems to make more sense than to make it hard for them ‘for their own good’.

I did try turning off the ‘are you sure you want to delete that file’ warning, as I know I can get it back from the re-cycle bin, but I like the comfort of clicking Yes (without thinking) to the warning so I put it back.

I find that I turn off many of the Excel warnings, as they are covered by undo anyway. Things like ‘are you sure you want to overwrite those cells’ when pasting is turned off (along with all similar warnings) as I know I can either undo or revert to a saved version if things go badly wrong.

Do you agree that some of this stuff is patronising?

Do you turn off the warnings (Excel and elsewhere)?

What do you do with the systems you build for others?

cheers

Simon

Data types

Bearing in mind that cells in Excel worksheets are effectively variants is there any point in having an integrated programming language that is typed?

Is the whole ‘Option Explicit’ thing wrong headed for a spreadsheet automation language?

The modern trend seems to be towards dynamic typing, would that be a better option?

I’ve always properly typed all variables (and not with that $# nonsense either). But thats maybe a throwback to other types of dev work I have done.

When working with spreadsheet data in code should we worry about the underlying type?

And if so, should we also worry about it in spreadsheet formulas too?

What do you think?

cheers

Simon

10,000 hours part 2

Of course 10,000 hours wisely invested in becoming a spreadsheet guru isn’t going to be much help if you get a problem that would be best solved with a relation database right?

In skiing either you have developed the core skills to ski most terrain or you havent. You don’t get into a heavy powder field and think “bugger I should be snowboarding”. (Well I would actually, being more of a snowboarder these days).

In football you wouldn’t get to a position where you think “Damn I should have done this with a hockey stick”.

With spreadsheets, I have seen many ‘experts’ who can create a mega monster array formulas to solve all sorts of things. Way beyond what I can or would do.

To me any expertise has to include the ability to select the appropriate technology for the task. And potentially the confidence to say “you should do this in Java, for these reasons…I don’t do Java but I can recommend someone”.

Do you think being an expert in only one small area of IT means you really aren’t an expert in IT?

cheers

Simon

10,000 hours to be an expert

I was reading somewhere to do with sports of a known phenomenon that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expert status in an activity.

The suggestion was those kids covering that many hours in football would almost certainly be excellent. In part time activity that’s about 10 years, which may explain why we have some superb players around 17. (club football tends to start around 7 in the UK)

In full time its about 5 years, which is why those with that level of experience of a product or business process are often considered gurus. Of course if your area changes fundamentally every couple of years, then its not going to be possible to achieve guru status in any current product.

There is another side to this that I first read in Code Complete - do you have 5 years experience, or 1 years experience 5 times? ie the progress you make depends how you invest your 10,000 hours.

And of course there is also the oft repeated phrase - practice makes perfect, but only perfect practice. Having watched tons of people practice and practice crappy ski technique, I am never surprised to see hundreds of skiers who have mastered the art of skiing badly. They have created a glass ceiling for themselves, that they will struggle to get through. Decent advanced training can fix this, but few intermediates take further training - taking misplaced pride in being self taught, just like many spreadsheeters?

Maybe people who code procedurally do the same thing? they will struggle to ‘move to the next level’ of object oriented coding? I’m not convinced thats valid as OO is often overkill, especially for spreadsheet based stuff.

What do you think?

Have you got 10,000 hours/5 years in? do you feel like an expert?

cheers

Simon