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IT is probably one of the most dynamic fields in the job market and people are a very important yet limited resource.
And yet people come and go quite often, and most of them are complaining about the lack of motivation.
This problem will end now with this simple guide for motivating programmers and not only them!
Programmers need challenging problems, they keep saying all the time that they need more challenges, don’t they?
Give your coder a true challenge! Make him get specifications from a client that doesn’t know what he wants, let him struggle, you could even try leaving him do this by himself, let him feel the adrenaline of a true challenge!
It must be noted that a programmer is nothing more than a repressed Project Manager, give him a chance to express!
However, you should not stop with that, because there is no greater challenge than to work on multiple assignments at the same time. A good idea for raising complexity is to offer him the chance to work on multiple projects in parallel. Give him the opportunity to have his mind busy with different things, diversity is always good, isn’t it?
A little secret for exploring diversity at its fullest is for him to have different roles on different projects, maybe have him alternate a project that requires management with one that requires maintenance. It’s a shame to not have enough diversity!
Is he writing a lot of code? You have to do something about it! When a programmer is focused working on something, keep in mind that he’s actually desperately crying for attention. You have to do something to break this vicious circle, it’s your duty as a manager to save him!
You have to find a way to interrupt him: try with a few meeting, they always help. If he is looking eager to get out of a meeting, it’s just a sign that he wants to get into the next one!
In time, you’ll see that the better a developer is at writing code, the more he’ll wish not to have time for it anymore. However, he’s not going to tell you this, or, even if he does, it’s because he really doesn’t know what he truly desires.
And eventually, if he likes to write code so much, maybe you should take it to the next level and get him to test it on his own. After all, if he wrote it, who would know better how to test it?
There is one more thing to mention in the context of a challenge. When a programmer is coming to an interview, he will always say “I want to learn new things”. How do you apply in real life this desire? Simple, you have to make him work on something that he doesn’t know anything about! This way you will present him with something that’s at the same time new and challenging. Is he a PHP programmer? Good for him, now give him a Java project! Is he a Java programmer? Nothing could be simpler, give him something to do in Objective-C! Maybe sometimes it will be hard to find new technologies the are completely unfamiliar to him, but a programmer’s happiness is not an easy thing to obtain!Try not to fall in the trap of offering salaries that are correlated with the position he applied for. Don’t worry, the salary is confidential, nobody talks about it. Especially not when he recommends a friend, he will definitely not inquire about the salary that was offered to said friend, if confidential. It would be a lack of professional ethics to try to find out, you really don’t have to worry about it.
And speaking of interviews, maybe you think that hiring processes should lead to meaningful results and qualified candidates. You couldn’t be more wrong, because what do you truly need? Like I’ve said before: Diversity! Not long ago I’ve read an article about some chinese companies hiring beautiful women to make the work environment more enjoyable and stimulating. You have to always find ways to integrate the new tendencies, and if the only open positions that you have are for technical jobs, you have to work with what you have. Maybe you think hiring based on looks can be problematic sometimes, especially when the jobs are technical. In this cases you have to realise that motivation has to be designed at a large scale. Yes, maybe some teams will require more time to adapt to this kind of new team members, however if that person has done something worth mentioning in any way, it means you’ve done a great job!
Let’s not forget about trainings and conferences. When did you last talk with a programmer saying that he doesn’t want to go to trainings or specialised conferences?
Motivation has to be maintained like any other desire. There are two components to it: wishing for something, and not least, not getting the something that is desired. If you wish for something it’s because you don’t have it yet, right?
If you didn’t already understand, the solution is simple: don’t let him have the something that he wants, so that he will be perpetually motivated to work hard in order to get it. He wants a training? Organise the training then make sure you are sending there the persons that are the least interested in it. He will see that he has a chance, but it wasn’t his turn right now.
Maybe this will sometimes be a challenge for management, but with a lot of carefulness it can be made possible! Keep the desire alive!
Another advice in regards to trainings: to keep the desire alive it is useful to send him to trainings in which he isn’t interested, but in which somebody else is interested. This way you will always have employees interested in trainings and having trainings, and also motivated!
When he is working he shouldn’t be able to see the usefulness of his work, it is very important. If he will see it, how can he be motivated still? It’s like climbing a mountain, no climber is motivated to go on if he knows how high he already is. You must be careful not to let him know where he is standing: keep those statistics and progress reports well hidden, because if he gets to have a feeling of ending, of target reached, of goal achieved, how would it be a true challenge then?
And don’t forget to not show him trust, he must build it for himself. You should provide him with a target and then keep it just a target. Indeed, a target achieved provokes pleasure and the satisfaction of a job well done, but is that what you want to show? Think about it, each time you congratulate him for his work will he be more motivated? Why try to stimulate him to improve when you can stimulate him to reach a target that he can’t. Don’t show him you trust him, let him struggle, let him feel the challenge.
In Romania we have a saying: “the known road is the shortest”. Regardless, some try to automate rudimentary tasks. Basically they are trying to eliminate the known road. Actually, if you prevent him from automating processes you are helping him remain busy, to have a busy mind, and a busy mind is an active mind!
And, secondly, with this approach you are helping him maintain his work place. Maybe he doesn’t realise it, but he will lose his purpose when he will remove exactly the tasks which, eventually, he knew so well, because he made them so many times… Programmer or not, he mustn’t be replaced by a robot!
Thirdly, it’s the satisfaction you get of walking the known road – don’t let him divert from it, because, it’s so well known that it should be finished quickly enough.
And never forget that you must teach him the importance of management. He must see that you can help him, that you are the key to his success and happiness. To show this it is very important to trust yourself. Try to organise a party and don’t invite him. Nothing says more “I could’ve been there” than not being there.
Another way is to organise a business trip in an exotic location. Don’t worry, it’s not important to actually have something to do there. While you’re there, don’t forget to have fun, it is very important for him to know that you’re enjoying yourself. When it gets though, you have to remember that you’re not doing this for you, you are doing your best to have fun for his and his imagination’s benefit!
Maybe some suggestions will not work for everybody, but you have to combine as many of them as possible to have a real success and keep your programmers truly motivated!
Don’t try to identify this utopian world, because any resemblance with the daily reality is purely coincidental.
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This is a retrospective of the year that has just ended.
In case anybody is still wandering, no, PHP 6 didn’t come out and it will probably not come out any time soon.
Why is it relevant? Since I started this blog, at the end of each year I had a post related to PHP 6 and the fact that it wasn’t released. In 2008 it was a popular question, but nobody is wondering about that anymore, and so I will close this subject now. Let’s return to the year that has just ended.
Close to the middle of the year, the version PHP 5.5 was released, bringing features like: finally , generators and many other enhancements.
Like in 5.4, these are not defining features for the language. In this new version, there are functionalities that can be easily replaced, but if present, they are welcome.
Even though PHP is proving very dynamic lately, I think this year the main keywords were HTML5 and JavaScript.
HTML5 is seeing a lot of improvements and older components begin to have more momentum. The companies are beginning to invest in games that work in the browser using WebGL. Even older games are getting ported to the platform, using technologies like asm.js.
And, because I’ve brought games into the subject, it seems very interesting to me how only 5-7 years ago the games built with JavaScript were relatively simplistic, and now they can be compared with the ones from PCs and consoles.
I think the web revolution, which many were expecting, is taking shape. Finally the Web is a platform in the true meaning and JavaScript a language truly appreciated.
The success is due to all sides, it is not only about ECMA or only about browser manufactures, now it is truly dynamic. The Web revolution is in full blow!
When it comes to backend, the spotlight was on Node.js. It is becoming an important player on the market. New frameworks have appeared and it isn’t a platform mainly used by hackers eager to explore new technologies anymore, but also by large companies, like PayPal, LinkedIn and Yahoo, adding a vote of confidence to it. I think Node.js is finding its place and a niche in the market, and, as a JavaScript fan, I can only be happy.
An advantage of Node.js is that you don’t have to take into consideration different JavaScript versions, like in the browser. It allows the use of the latest features from ECMA freely, an environment where you can develop JavaScript with not headaches.
Technically speaking, it was a very interesting year for web development.
Finally, I want to wish you all an extraordinary 2014!
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In movies where hackers appear, source code appears flowing in rivers on the screen. Looks important, seems like there is a computer genius that is preparing to revolutionaries something.
Ever wandered what that epic code from the movie is? John Graham-Cumming has done a collection of movies and the source code used in them: http://moviecode.tumblr.com/.
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Motivated by Rober Martin’s article, Hoards Of Novices, I’ve decided to write an article on a similar subject.
I do not want to write about the need for employers to hire juniors, but about why these juniors are not up to the expectations and, in the end, what can be done to be better prepared.
The software market is continuously expanding. Software is the way we command a computer what to do. Today, devices around us have processors, software and applications, from phones, watches, TVs and up to washing machines and refrigerators. All these devices need programms and programmers to develop applications for them.
With this premises, we reach the Software crisis. It was concluded that we need to build software faster in order to solve this crisis. This was a popular subject in the ’60s, but in time it has become less important.
To solve this problem, high level languages and frameworks were built. High level languages made development and maintenance of an application much easier. This way, programmers are getting very far from the “metal” of the actual hardware, working with concepts much easier to deal with.
In a world of high level languages (Java, C#, PHP, Python, JavaScript etc.) it is much easier and faster to create an application.
Yet, although developing an application is becoming easier, the quality of the developers is falling.
A consumer society
We need school for a better job.
Because the need for studies is a general need, the school itself is diluting. The educational principles haven’t had significant changes since education became available to everybody. The result of the learning process is the exam, in order to determine the level of knowledge. And even more, a mediocre result allows us to move forward, without prove that the required base is present.
Moving to the next level is done with a partial evaluation, you don’t have to know 100% of the information, just 50-60%. It is not exactly clear if there are important notions in the remaining 40-50%.
This educational problem is more or less a general problem and there are few those who try different approaches.
In general, I don’t consider school a defining system for determining the knowledge, especially today, when we have access to such a large volume of alternatives for it.
When students finish school, they don’t have all the required knowledge to actually work in the industry, which is not abnormal. School must offer a general basis. For instance, during my higher education I can remember at least 8-9 programming languages that we studied. There were actually more, but I didn’t keep a detailed evidence of them. It is clear that you can’t possibly know all these programming languages in order to become productive using them. On the other hand, you have an idea on how to approach them, which may help you to find the one you’ll like to study in thoroughness.
That’s the key, to study in thoroughness! For this we each have our approach, here you can find your own way, either courses, books, practical projects or all of them. By thoroughly studying a subject, the employers will not only accept you, but they will hunt you!
Often, the passion will totally replace the studies from school. I’ve met a lot of people which, even though they haven’t studied informatics in school, they are now professionals in it.
The good part is that a lot of people are studying from pleasure and I advise anyone who is reading these lines to search for pleasure in what they do. This is the best motivation.
Alternative education in a consumer society
Because the traditional learning techniques are no exactly sufficient, let’s talk about a few alternative methods:
- books
- courses
- tutorials
- articles/blogs
Books
Traditionally books are the best source of information (at least until the Internet became available). But there is no guaranty for the quality!
About 8-9 years ago I was trying to buy a JavaScript book. The selection wasn’t very big and so I tried to analyze each one.
In the end I was disappointed with my choice, because instead of teaching me JavaScript, the book was teaching how to make special effects on the page (very popular in that period).
In my particular case, I found the answer much later in a presentation by Douglas Crockford. He said that most JavaScript books are like that and he was recommending a single book, beside the book written by him, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide.
The reason is very simple, people tend to be more drawn by books that promise to teach a language or technology in a limited number of lessons or days. We want everything now, but studying takes time, you must understand the notions, not just a fast overview.
Generally, to determine the quality of a book you should look for reviews. These days it is very easy, I prefer Amazon.com and not only. This way you can determine if it is what you are looking for.
Sometimes a faster approach is useful, especially if you don’t have any previous experience on the subject, but generally this doesn’t offer a general perspective, only a gentile introduction.
Courses
There are a lot of courses, both in-class and on-line. Just like for the books, it is hard to determine the quality of the course.
Courses promise a lot, but a lot of the times they don’t treat the subjects in detail and in the end, even though you have the impression that you have learned a lot, when it comes to practice you realize that any variation from the course material is very difficult.
Just like for books, references are very important! Unfortunately, there aren’t as many reviews for course as there are for books.
Try to see what subjects the course is teaching and the detail of the approach. Sometimes, you can find more easily a reference for the teacher than for the course.
Tutorials
Especially on the Internet, there are a lot of tutorials that promise to teach a certain domain, but they only teach you how to create their example. In the end you can only create small variations of the initial example. Often, the creator of the tutorial has the best intentions, but it is hard to transfer information like this.
For the free ones it is very easy to determine if the approach is the right one for you and for your needs. Try to watch a few episodes and in the end see how much you’ve understood on how that particular component is working. If you can only replicate, maybe you need to search a little more.
The good part is that there are generally a lot of them to choose from. For instance, for a programming language you can first check the official reference to see what you should learn about, then in the tutorial you can see how many of the points from the reference were approached.
For the commercial ones it is a bit harder, because often you just have a small introspective preview, insufficient to form an opinion. For those particular cases you should search for reviews.
Blogs and articles
The good part here is that the time investment is relatively small. It is simpler to get a general idea.
The disadvantage is that some of the articles don’t update with time. You must make sure that the examples work on the version that you are using. From my own experience I can say that keeping an article up to date is hard an takes a lot of time. For instance some of the articles on this blog that still attract visitors are written a few years back and if I don’t use that particular technology anymore, I’m tempted not to keep them up to date.
How to learn better
Search for references and reviews for the materials that will require an investment in time and/or money: books, courses or tutorials.
When you’ve settled on a subject, try to see what materials others recommend. The Internet is full of materials of different levels of difficulty.
When you fell that you’ve mastered a subject, test your knowledge. Build an app, follow the subject on Q/A platforms or even write a tutorial for the others. You tend to understand much better a subject when you have to describe it to others.
Practice! It is very important to practice what you learn or you’ll forget much easier than you think. Contribute to open-source projects, try to do personal projects or try to adapt projects created by somebody else to your needs. Github is a very good tool for finding and publishing projects.
It is a bit harder at the beginning to understand somebody else’s code, but in the industry it is mandatory in order to be able to collaborate with others.
Learn new things all the time. Technology is changing, and so is the perspective over it. For instance, AJAX appeared in the late “90’s, but the perspective over it and how it can be used changed dramatically over the next few years, even though the technology itself didn’t change a lot during that time. The same for JavaScript, even though it appeared in the “90’s, only after 2000 it began to be considered an useful tool, previously it was mainly used for special effects on the page.
For a while, PHP was considered useful only for small projects. Today it is the language of choice for giants of the internet, like Facebook and Yahoo!. Along with the popularity, the best practices on the language itself changed for a better scalability and performance.
Conclusion
The educational system doesn’t offer the performance that employers are looking for. This creates a discrepancy between the expectations of the employers and those of the graduates, and this not restricted to informatics.
Unfortunately, the alternative materials sometimes also promise unrealistic things. Some study technologies and programming languages for months, while others promise results after only days or even hours.
Fortunately, we are living in an era dominated by information, and we can find not only materials, but also opinions about them.
Through better training, the changes of finding a job are rising considerably, resulting in satisfaction on both sides.
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Another year has passed without native unicode support for PHP. Yes, PHP6 is not here yet, in case anybody was still asking…
But, the version that is now here is PHP 5.4. With this version only refinements were added, there weren’t changes as big as there were on PHP 5.3. In PHP 5.4, the big addition are “traits” and, my favorite, the new version for closure.
As the keywords for last year were Drupal and Magento, this year the keyword was only Magento.
A couple of months ago, more or less forced by the circumstances, I’ve taken the Magento Plus certification exam. For this certification, Optaros, my employer, had a major influence. We had been more or less made to take the exam and we also had to be part of a company level study group.
I haven’t been part of a study group since faculty, and I must admit that I’ve forgotten how useful it is. Colleagues with more Magento experience (unlike me who I’ve been working with Magento for a little more than an year), had helped a lot to clarify issues and to document them.
But more about this in another blog, that will follow shortly (I hope)…
Anyway, after studying Magento in so much detail, I must admit that I have a lot more respect for the platform. After you analyze the backend architecture, a different picture is emerging. The architecture is very interesting and quite flexible, which makes you overlook some of it’s shortcomings.
Now that a new year has begun, I wish I’m going to publish more, I think in the last period I haven’t been very “productive” when it comes to publishing, either text or code.
Also this year I want to take at least another certification exam. As the Magento certification was set only for this year, I still have a lot of options on my plate.
That’s about all for 2012 and plans for 2013.
I wish you an excellent 2013!