There is no expert, there is only us

Chairs in my office

Once I was chatting with my teammates...

Me: "I wonder why it is always necessary to refer to this source, that source, has anyone done it, is there any research? While no problem is the same, no situation is the same. Why not use our own brains to create a whole new one? Why do we have to be the insiders to consult the outsiders? Isn't that very paradoxical?"

My teammate: "I agree with your point that no two situations will be exactly the same and that there is no one size fits all. But there's one like this, I don't think it's all the problems we're dealing with that only we can meet. So of course, if I can find a source to refer to first, it's still better. Just like when implementing a software feature, not every problem is the same. But I still have to go check to see if I'm the only one I've met? Or if someone has met me, I have to see if their method suits me before I decide to try it, but I don't blindly "they do it, I follow it". I want to find one that can balance Do Not Repeat (+ YAGNI) and Not Invented Here."

Me: "This is the climax and the difference between your point of view and mine. I still don't think something pre-reference is better. For me, we lose our creativity from that moment on. When faced with a problem, in the past, normally, I would act instinctively “How does the world solve this problem? Has anyone encountered this problem?”, but now “Wait! slowly....“, instead I try to ask myself “how am I going to deal with this”, because I know “there is no expert, there is only us”, which means we are the best people in this problem, what is our idea first? And obviously, no one can fully understand, so the step of finding out and referencing is the next step, not the first one. There are many cases where I don't have a pre-reference but I want to see how my idea will work in practice, I want to see that idea lives, and be verified by the real world."

Comments

Junit - Test fails on French or German string assertion

In my previous post about building a regex to check a text without special characters but allow German and French . I met a problem that the unit test works fine on my machine using Eclipse, but it was fail when running on Jenkins' build job. Here is my test: @Test public void shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters(){ String source = "ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ"; assertFalse(SpecialCharactersUtils.isExistSpecialCharater(source)); } Production code: public static boolean isExistNotAllowedCharacters(String source){ Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z_0-9_ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ]*$"); Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(source); return !matcher.matches(); } The result likes the following: Failed tests: SpecialCharactersUtilsTest.shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters:32 null A guy from stackoverflow.com says: "This is probably due to the default encoding used for your Java source files. The ö in the string literal in the J...

How to apply Lean - Kanban for your business

This is the topic of Scrum Breakfast meetup this time, speaker: Ms. Phuong Bui - Technical Project Manager of YOOSE Pte. Ltd. http://www.meetup.com/Scrum-Breakfast-Vietnam-Agile-and-Scrum-Meetup/events/230313727/ Lean comes from Lean manufacturing is a method that focuses on elimination of wastes. In other words, this is a set of principles for archiving the quality, speed and customer alignment. The first time I knew about the term "Lean" is from the book Software Craftsmanship . Sandro recommends if we want to transform our pet projects into a real business, we should get familiar with Lean Startup concepts. In this talk, Ms. Phuong pointed out some major wastes includes information (ex: unclear requirements), processes (ex: waiting), physical environment and people. Knowing what the problems should be the best way to eliminate them. The difference between Single item flow and Batch processing is the second main point; and it is the Lean's idea. Batch pr...

My must-have apps for daily work

There is no doubt that cool apps can help us be more productive and enjoyable at work. For the time being, I really love the following apps which are used by me almost every day. 1. A personal Kanban In fact, a personal kanban is the most useful app for me. Why does it matter? It is not just a to-do list, but it keeps me motivated every day because it helps me be able to know what my "big picture" is. I usually set up my plans together with a path to reach them. KanbanFlow is my preferred tool. KanbanFlow 2. A terminal Needless to say, a terminal is a must-have app for every developer, especially the ones use macOS/Linux. Due to its importance, I love to decorate and enhance it to be super exciting with various tools such as iTerm , oh-my- zsh , and thefuck . ;) iTerm + oh-my-zsh 3. A documentation "ecosystem" As a developer, I can not remember all things that I have experimented a day. Moreover, a document is really useful for sharing an...

Performance of a Data Structure

Why data structures matter The fact is that programs are all about processing data. Data structures are referred to how data is organized which affects the time of executing a program. How to measure the performance of a data structure In order to measure "how fast"/efficiency/performance of a data structure, we measure the performance of its operations. There are four basic operations including reading , searching , insertion , and deletion . A pure time consuming is not used for the measuring because it is not reliable depending on the hardware that it is run on. But instead, we use the term time complexity which refers to how many steps an operation takes. An example of how a single rule can affect efficiency Let's compare two data structures: Array and Set (with N elements). 1. Array - Reading : 1 step (because the computer has the ability to jump to any particular index in the array) - Searching : N steps (the worst case with linear search) - Inserti...

The Evolution of Team Collaboration

I n my point of view, if a team has a good collaboration, team members will achieve the following: To be more effective To make work more enjoyable I have been working for a company for nearly four years as an software developer. Working on various projects from maintaining existing systems to developing a substantial product resulted in me moving to new teams three times. Actually, my most stable team lasted only around three years. Every time I've moved to a new team, I have a chance to work with new members and a new team culture again. Indeed, I realize that there is a process of developing the team collaboration which gets better time by time. I think it is an evolution ! Phase 1: Poorly collaborate For example, that is when the team members have the following issues: Only work on his/her area of expertise Don't communicate to others Be not confident to take on new challages Don't listen to other members. Subsequently, the team ha...

vhandit

Search This Blog