Gluu’s Weblog

When you’re trying to come up with a software architecture, you’re typically trying to define an ontology of objects. What do objects give us? Code reuse. Therefore any software architecture you create must take into consideration the future changes that are likely to occur. It’s difficult to foresee what problems will come up, which is where experience helps a lot. But when writing the actual code you must always ask yourself “If I write the code this way, will I be able to reuse this code without touching its internals?”

I’ve seen people pay lip service to architectures such as MVC but it’s quite clear when reading the code that they don’t understand that all MVC is really trying to do is allow you to separate the presentation and control logic from the actual data.

Another important aspect of this question is having single source data. For example, in a database you wouldn’t usually want to store a value in two different places where there’s a constraint that the two values must be the same, because if you change one, there’s a potential for a programmer to make a mistake and not change the other.

1) A good module/namespace/package system. Polluting a global namespace is a terrible idea. Sometimes you’ll see a function in code and have no context for where it’s coming from and it could very likely be ambiguous in a language like php.

2) Static Typing is a required feature despite the increased verbosity because it makes functions well-defined. They take very specific inputs and produce very specific outputs. Without this restriction you must rely on the programmer to not make the mistake of returning different types. For example, in Elgg core which is written in php, a function that fetches objects will either return an array of objects or… false. If you write code that uses this function it’s retarded to write a special case check for “false” instead of iterating over an empty array.

3) Regular expressions and strings library – doing this stuff by hand is a pain in the ass and has been done a million times. Every language should make this extremely easy to do and special case it so its not ridiculously verbose to do as well. (ahem, Java).

4) First class/anonymous functions – this allows for some particularly simple code. e.g. map(func(x){},array()) turns multiline code into one line. It also allows for concurrency, i.e. concurrent_map(heavy_function, big_array);

5) Large, well written library – why rewrite the wheel?

6) Community/Open Source – learn how to write this language well by reading others code.

…and more to come

I think when people are under stress they look for sources of comfort. They play video games, or they eat, or do anything that produces comfort. Sometimes these activities are destructive. For example, comfort eating makes your health worse. Some people advocate exercising or eating well as remedies for stress, but this is difficult to do since stress causes you to stop doing these things. This is attempting to fix the symptoms and not the source of the problem. The fundamental problem is that something in your life is producing stress. From my own self-observations, I get stressed when I don’t work on things that I need to get done. Working hard is not stressful, but not working hard on something that you care about is. Some of the reasons that people don’t work hard on something they care about is maybe they think it’s too hard, or an overwhelming amount of work. This means the best way to reduce stress is first to identify what you care about that must be done. Then you must solve this problem. If the problem is extremely difficult or forbidding, then you must use techniques to break down the problem. I hypothesize that stress is a subconscious belief of the mind that you may be unable to cope with something going on in your life. For example, if you’re house is being taken away from you and you cannot do anything about it, that is an extremely stressful situation since there are no actions you can take to solve this problem. Whereas watching a series of videos to get rid of a parking ticket has a predefined simple path that makes it easy to solve and is therefore not stressful.

Let’s work out an example. Suppose I have to produce some software project within a month. First of all, a month’s worth of work looked at as one whole is a large and forbidding problem. We may never start. The first thing to do is to break this problem down into smaller doable parts. For example, you may mock up a prototype at first, figure out the typical use cases, figure out the software architecture, then write portions of the code. Breaking a hard problem down into easier problems dissipates the belief that the problem is too hard. The other aspect of this problem is, do you have enough time to complete the project? Since you’ve already broken this task down into pieces, you can now attempt to schedule them and see if you’ve enough estimated time to complete them. One thing about this is you should allocate extra time for unforeseen circumstances and this should typically be quite a lot. So for our monthlong example, we would want to complete most of our work by the second or third week and leave ourselves plenty of extra time to complete the work should unforeseen circumstances arise. You may notice that you’ll have to work weekends in order to reach that deadline, and have to work long hours. However, you’ve relieved all the WORRIES that you had about being able to cope with this problem. You know that you can cope the problem with these actions and have turned something that causes stress into a simple solved problem.

Some benefits of this approach is that if you complete the tasks assigned for a particular day, then you’re home free for the rest of the day and can partake in other things in your life. In fact, you are self-incentivizing to finish your work as quickly as possible rather than spread the work out over the course of the whole day. This makes you more time-efficient since you know if you complete your work you can relax and do something fun.

Another tip is to sequence and decompose the tasks for a day such that the easiest things are first and most of the tasks are not too difficult. Sometimes a difficult problem causes people to put off work because they’re worried about it, but if the problems are easy then the cognitive obstacles one must clear in order to start working are much less. Once you start working, then all the obstacles are much less since you are already “in the zone.”

The essence of relieving stress is proving to yourself that you can cope with the problems that come up in life.

The other facet of stress is that some of our beliefs may be preventing ourselves from relieving stress. Suppose you have the belief that you need to be with a certain person in order to be happy. You cannot control what the other person chooses to do, and thus your belief puts you in a position where you are potentially helpless. Putting yourself in that situation is very stressful, but ultimately it is ONLY A PRODUCT OF YOUR BELIEFS. This is when you must reexamine your beliefs and realign them with what is more realistic and healthy. For example, you should believe that there are many people with which you can be with to be happy, and that if you work at it you can find happiness by finding one of these people.

Recently I’ve been posting about the way small changes can make a dramatic difference over time. I really think this concept needs to be applied to education as well. Progressions in difficulty need to be defined, and students need to be put in positions where they can succeed. They must be allowed to succeed, to allow that dose of dopamine, to get their behavioral conditioning going and to build a sustainable habit of fun and learning. So much of human potential remains untapped because we don’t realize the subtle conditions required to bring out that potential. Sometimes working hard is the wrong thing to do, and working easy is the way to go.

Students are frequently misplaced in school. The student that received a C in mathematics because his family life was not stable and hence he could not concentrate not only pays the penalty of that year, but also pays compounding interest in the following years. A C in a prerequisite subject leads to more bad grades because topics are clearly more difficult when you do not even know the prerequisites. For a young student this obstacle requires a Herculean effort to overcome, and I would say nine times out of 10 (or worse), these conditions lead to a downward spiral. Strangely enough, this would imply that a teacher would be doing what’s best for a child by failing them rather than allowing them to pass without having adequately demonstrated ability. Failing a child and allowing them to leave school to focus on resolving family stability issues would be more productive rather than attempting to force a student through the material in my opinion.

In sports, where performance is king, this kind of method has always been obvious. Teachers could learn a lot about how to bring out human potential from coaches. I think this is part of why I’ve always loved basketball.

Finding out what you are passionate about is typically difficult. I’d say that most people don’t know what they’re passionate about, or what passion is in concrete terms. But generally everyone will agree with the statement that passion is necessary for success. Why? Because passion creates motivation, and motivation is the fuel of hard work and practice.

I’ve come to realize I’ve had passing interests in many things, but I’m starting to believe that the way you can identify your passion is to simply let your mind wander, and see where it goes. If you frequently find yourself daydreaming about art, or writing a book, creating a company, becoming a chef, I think you’ve found the inklings of “passion.”

And I think passion is delicate, it can easily be squashed by negative experiences or it can be nurtured in a virtuous cycle to become something truly special. Which leads me to games.

Recently, there’s been media coverage of the success of social games. If you try to play any of these games (I’ve tried playing Cafe World), you will realize that there is a large component of “leveling up.” In other words, you take certain actions to improve your ability or status in the game, and are rewarded in the game by some form of positive feedback such as more experience points or money or items. There is also progressive difficulty in terms of levels, such that as the player becomes more capable, the goal of reaching the next level is made increasingly difficult.

I was chatting with a friend over dinner recently, and he told me that his theory of what makes games fun is that they are a metaphor for life. We constantly are trying to achieve and improve in life, and tangible rewards, accomplishments, and achievements are forms of positive feedback that push us along these paths. Maybe this is why people escape to video games, because in their own life they have not been able to “level up” – possibly due to outlandish expectations for the next level, or some other environmental phenomena preventing progress and reward for progress.

This leads to the interesting conclusion that to stoke the fires of passion, we must use goal-setting and motivation theory from psychology. Set goals that are reasonably achievable, and in the beginning they should be quite easy. Accomplishing the goal is typically its own reward. Increase the difficulty as you go along such that the task is not too difficult nor too easy. This is the virtuous cycle of what may otherwise be called intrinsic motivation. I think this is also why I’ve frequently heard of professional coaches avoiding putting athletes in positions where they will fail badly or be humiliated, as these elements most likely reduce motivation. People must have goals where they occasionally fail, but if the goals are hopeless then they may lose motivation.