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 Posted in Articles on September 17th, 2009
 Paul Graham (Author of Hackers and Painters) I love Paul Graham. The guy speaks my mind. Although I don’t agree with all of his ideas (E.G. Java programmers are stupid. PERIOD.), most of his ideas are golden. For those of weak hearts (and sensitive ego), please proceed with care. 
The essay that will follow, entitled Great Hackers, basically compliments the main idea of my previous post which is “To do something well you have to love it.”
Some quotable quotes from this essay:
“Ordinary programmers write code to pay the bills. Great hackers think of it as something they do for fun, and which they’re delighted to find people will pay them for.”
“Hackers like to work for people with high standards. But it’s not enough just to be exacting. You have to insist on the right things. Which usually means that you have to be a hacker yourself. I’ve seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you’re not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.”
“The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don’t learn anything from them. Working on nasty little problems makes you stupid. Good hackers avoid it for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers.”
“I’ve found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent.”
“The key to being a good hacker may be to work on what you like. When I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don’t want to. I don’t know if this is cause or effect; it may be both.”
“One difference I’ve noticed between great hackers and smart people in general is that hackers are more politically incorrect. And I can see why political incorrectness would be a useful quality in programming. Programs are very complex and, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. In such situations it’s helpful to have a habit of questioning assumptions.”
AND NOW, THE ESSAY
Continue reading “Ordinary Programmers vs Great Hackers” »
Posted in Articles on September 14th, 2009
 Judy Ann Santos - Philippine Superstar If there is someone that I hate more than Ms. Judy Ann Santos, that someone would have to be a person who has a job that he or she is not passionate about.
I don’t know if it’s the Philippine economy or just the Filipino culture that makes it “okay” for someone to live a life of suffering; enduring a job he or she hates for exchange of a comfortable life and a prestigious career. I’ve heard countless stories of teenagers being forced by their parents to take a course like Medicine, Law or Engineering (Courses which will attach fancy-sounding, age-old, titles to their child’s name) against their child’s will. I’ve accidentally watched countless Pinoy movies with the same theme. (Kid wants to major in Fine Arts, MOM aka Mrs. Attorney wants the kid to major in Law and be a lawyer. Sounds familiar?)
Five years ago, Nursing became a popular course for High School graduates to take in college. I know that because that was the year when I graduated from High School. During that time, some of my classmates took Nursing courses not because they want to be nurses but just because being a nurse would almost guarantee a free-work pass to the US and a chance of snatching that American dream. And you know what? I think majority of the newly graduated nurses thinks the same too.
Continue reading “High Salary is Killing the Software Industry” »
Posted in Personal on August 10th, 2009
Last Friday was my 120th day at work. August 7, 2009 was the day that I officially became a permanent part of the workforce. I am now a “regular”, full-pledged, software developer.  Society has decided to accept me into the “real world”. People from this part of the world will now start to refer to me as an “adult” despite my bubbly, child-like disposition. 
 6 Months of Corporate Citizenry For those who are not acquainted with the Philippine’s Labor System, let me put you up to speed with the “regularization” process. When a new employee enters a company, there is a six-month “getting-to-know” period wherein the employer will closely observe the employee’s job performance and base on that performance, the employer would decide whether to keep the employee as a “regular” employee or not (Fired). During that “getting-to-know” period, you as an “irregular/probationary” employee, are not entitled with some benefits like full medical benefits, perfect attendance bonus, etc.
Continue reading “My journey so far” »
Posted in Personal on July 19th, 2009
 Adidas Ozweego 365 It was just like yesterday when my Dad took me to a nearby mall to buy me my first pair of school shoes. I can still vividly remember that shoe – it was black, made of leather, and had those noisy “strap-ons”.
 'twas black, made of leather and had those noisy "strap-ons". I never chose that shoe. I hated it. It was common and boring. Everyone in school wore the same shoe except for the cool kids. The cool kids had those shoe that will light/blink whenever you take a step. I want that shoe and I remember crying and whining all the way home when my Dad forced me to “choose” the leather one. I’ve always hated leather shoes.
 Cool Kid's Shoes -- IT BLINKS! Time flies. I’m already 20-ish, and today is the first time that I bought my own pair of shoes! Without my dad telling me what to like, choose or buy. I also paid it on my own. Oh, the price of independence.
Posted in Daily Logs on July 5th, 2009
 A Typical Call Center in the Philippines WOW. After watching this video/documentary, I can definitely say that the state of outsourcing here in the Philippines is SO MUCH better compared to India.
What happens when a successful US-based computer programmer, who lost his lucrative job to outsourcing, travels to India to try to get it back?
Will he discover the secret of India’s success, or that sending jobs overseas is an unstable gamble?
The videos below share his incredible experience. It’s a fascinating and humanizing portrait of real Indians in Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India”.
This inside look shows how ridiculous it is to throw around terms like “slave labor” and “stealing jobs” without understanding the realities of this unusual world where best jobs start at 6pm and end at 3am…
Three suggestions:
1. Keep in mind which jobs are displacing foreign workers and which are not.
2. Notice the level of complaining among Indian workers. It’s almost non-existent.
3. Give the videos a minute to load. Patience, young Jedi.
This is hard-to-find coverage that will change how you think about “your” job. Highly recommended.
Watch the documentary here!
Posted in Articles on June 28th, 2009
Today’s post is a simple reminder that Localization is a dirty job!
 DateTime.Parse() will break your software on localized system So, after some time working on the migration project, we finally released a stable Release Candidate. While the Test Team is still running their Critical Regression testing (that’s the final test before release) on the release candidate, I was transferred back to the Localization project.
My current task is to make a certain web application work with the localized version of our product which is running on a localized version of Windows.
So far, there are 8 tracks filled against this certain web application. A quick look at the tracks revealed a common problem:
“String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.”
Continue reading “DateTime.Parse on Localized Systems” »
Posted in Site Related on June 23rd, 2009
BLOG.ianuy.com is now running Wordpress version 2.8! Remind me to never update Wordpress again! I also upgraded all of my plugins to the latest version.
 Wordpress 2.8 Upgrade, Pain in the as* A number of things had gone wrong during the upgrade:
- During the automatic upgrade of my plugins, some of them didn’t restart succesfully on their own so I have to manually activate them agian.
- Some widgets were removed. Needed to re-add it manually again (Most Viewed Widget).
- My custom smiley was erased. Need to re-upload them again.
- The Wordpress editor (TinyMCE Editor) font had defaulted back to its original font (Times New Roman, 12px). This is frustrating because I totally forgot how to set the editor font. You need to manually match the editor font to the blog font to have the WYSIWIG effect. (For my future reference, the settings are in wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/wp_theme/content.css . You need to click “Save Draft” after making the css changes to see its effect!)
- After upgrading to Wordpress 2.8, I checked to see if IE 8 will display the site properly (thankfully it did!). However, I noticed that my blog is now serving ads from specificclick.net! (I wasn’t able to notice the pop-up ad from Firefox because I’m using Ad Block Plus). At first, I thought that my friend’s hosting service / contract has changed and is now injecting ads into my blog (talked to him and he said that he hasn’t done anything). Then, I suspected that one of the plugin owners got broke and decided to sell ads thru their plugins… So I deactivated all plugin to no avail. So then I suspected that Wordpress 2.8 might be serving the ads (how pathetically stupid of me, Wordpress wouldn’t do that!). So after a few hours of searching, I found out that SiteMeter is the one who is serving unsolicited ads from my site! (Don’t worry kids, I already replaced the JS code with the HTML code to block the ads. More info about the scandal here.)
I have also added the Global Translator plugin (see footer) to boost traffic. (Hey, not everyone can read Engrish! )
I haven’t checked every function of the blog yet. So if you find something that looks broken, please hit the comments! Thanks!
PS (totally unrelated): Yuri is so freakin’ cute! New SNSD single out on June 25!
Posted in Articles on June 21st, 2009
I can still clearly remember the words of our Tech Lead as if it was just said yesterday…
“Madali lang to sayo. Parang laro laro lang.”
He would always give me that answer while putting on a big, warm smile. Every time that I see him coding or preparing a design document, I would always approach him and ask him out of curiosity, “Ano ginagawa mo Sir? Mahirap ba yan?” and he would always give me that answer. And I have always wondered what he meant by “parang laro laro lang“. Sadly, I was never able to ask him about the actual meaning of it (he is now in Singapore) but as an Intern, I assumed that he meant that “If you’re having fun, it’s easy!“.
 So much for work being fun? Continue reading “Work is now officially “WORK”” »
Posted in Articles on June 7th, 2009
When I was an Intern at a large Global 500 company, my major responsibility is to deliver a Software Delivery process that uses the software engineering practice called Continuous Integration. In simple terms, I am responsible for a project to create and setup a Continuous Integration Build Server that will be used to “build” the company’s products.
During those days, when I hear the word “build” or “compile”, the first thing that comes into mind is to press the F5 button. Ever since I started programming, when someone asks me for a copy of my program or if I need to distribute the “binaries” of my program, all I do is press the F5 button to create an EXE (sometimes with a DLL), then browse to the output folder(Bin) and copy the binaries. Suffice to say, that is my “Software Delivery” process however crude it is.
In College, I got a little bit more sophisticated. My major projects are all carefully packaged in a very neat MSI installer — but that is just for the major projects. Most of my standalone tools are still made using the “Press F5 button to build” method.
Continue reading “The Importance of a Dedicated Build Machine” »
Posted in Articles on May 24th, 2009
EDIT: It was not my intention to offend people, I just want to share my opinion in my personal blog. Again, If I have offended you, I apologize.
I apologize for the sudden lack of software development updates. Its just that I got hit by the Korean Fever (no, its not a pandemic Flu! ) So please forgive this non-programming blog post.
 Girls Generation My addiction to all things Korean started when my Ex showed me a cute music video of a South Korean nine-member girl group called Girls Generation (SNSD/????). At first, I got very annoyed with the crazy jingle, but I instantly recognized the cuteness of the video. Now, I have a total of 4 GB of SNSD videos (meticulously stolen from Youtube), their complete discography on my Phone, and SNSD Ringtones. I am so addicted to them that I even have my four office monitors with SNSD wallpapers and SNSD Screensavers. I even watch and listen to my SNSD videos while working. My colleague, too, is also uber addicted to them and he says that the video increases his productivity!
To make my addiction worse, my brother who is addicted to Korean and Japanese Dramas, introduced me to Boys Before Flowers – the Korean drama adaptation of the Japanese manga Hana Yori Dango. After watching the said video, I suddenly want a Korean Hairstyle and a wardrobe makeover. Now, my TV set is locked-in to KBS. (And somebody please remind me to call Sky Cable to inquire YTF they removed Arirang from my TV Listing).
To my curiosity, I researched about the history of South Korea, the culture of South Korea and the economy of South Korea. And one thing was apparent, South Koreans love their country. They are proud of their lineage. They are both protectors of their future and guardians of their past. Just like the Japanese, they are nationalistic.
So it begs the question, Why are they Nationalistic and Why Filipinos are not? After sometime thinking bout this, I arrived at a simple answer.
Because they have something to be proud of!
Continue reading “On Filipino Nationalism (Or My pathetic explanation on Why Filipinos are not nationalistic)” »
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