Surya Suravarapu's Blog

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Thoughtworks Technology Radar (April 2010)

May 12

Posted by Surya Suravarapu in General | No Comments

Somehow I missed the release of second edition of Thoughtworks' technology radar [PDF]. As they did in the inaugural edition they evaluated various techniques, tools, platforms and languages and put them in four buckets -- hold, assess, trial and adopt.

I will jump to the biggest surprise (but something that's consistent with what I'm hearing these days) -- GWT is moved back from Assess to Hold status. I used to be a fan of the approach GWT took, mostly coming from my angst towards writing Javascript, and to develop client-side stuff using the language that I'm quite familiar with -- Java.  Although I haven't done enterprise stuff with GWT yet, what I heard was it's not as productive as I was earlier thinking about, and this technology radar points to some of the issues with the generation of Javascript in terms of productivity, troubleshoting, not being able to utilize powerful features of Javascript, and unit testing. I'm not giving up yet on GWT, but would certainly like to hear feedback from the folks who used it in production-grade applications with good success.

As far as languages are concerned -- they are excited about two languages that I'm having great fun with -- Scala and Clojure. I'm fairly convinced that the enterprises sooner than later would evaluate options of using these JVM-based languages than sticking with Java alone. Java as a language is not dead yet (in fact far from it and dead is a too harsh a word), but if the current trend continues in terms of these new breed of JVM languages (coupled with some good customer stories) that day may not be that far off. Other than that in the languages section -- HTML 5 is gaining traction, which is expected.

In the tools category -- Restfulie has got a mention. I think this is pretty significant in the world of REST-based development. Restfulie is an excellent tool to achieve Hypermedia constraint (HATEOAS) of REST, which helps significantly in loose coupling between clients and servers. They said it well -- "It [success of Restufulie] is an emperical proof that the web and the hypermedia can be used to orchestrate complex business activities".

Also in the tools category -- Subversion moves back into the Adopt section. It has to be that way all along, in my opinion. I like distributed version control systems (Git and Mercurial) a lot but Subversion still has a place in the enterprise. I second their opinion that it's a solid version control system suitable for most teams. New to enter the radar is Github, another success story, undoubtedly popularized Git along with their source code hosting and social networking abilities.

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Pomodoro Technique

Feb 23

Posted by Surya Suravarapu in General | No Comments

A decade ago Joel Spolsky wrote an article titled Where do these people get their (unoriginal) ideas. What he has written is common sense and most of us who worked for a few years in a corporate environment would agree with (I'm talking based on my IT background). Although the context of his article is different, the underlying theme is higher productivity, precisely the theme of this post. Joel says --

Here's the trouble. We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into "flow", also known as being "in the zone", where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone.

He continues ...

The other trouble is that it's so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers -- ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers -- all knock you out of the zone. ...

As Joel rightly points out in the article getting into that "zone" is not that easy. And once you are in, there are quite a few distractions in a typical corporate environment. Great, if you are lucky and gifted to be get into the zone without much effort. If you are like rest of us, you would be all ears for techniques that improve your productivity.

So an year or so ago, I stumbled on this technique called Pomodoro. At the outset it's a simple tracking and feedback process where the unit of work is the pomodoro, a time slot of 25 minutes. The basic principle is to keep you focused enough for specific period of time (in this case: 25 minutes). Here is a free e-book [PDF] if you are interested to know more.

This technique helped me quite well in accomplishing some of the tasks I have either been not focusing enough or procrastinating for various reasons.

This InfoQ article posed some interesting questions with some counter-arguments from Mario Fusco. Mario compares IT professionals with the professionals from other fields and says --

So, why should our work be so different from the former ones? Why do we always think that our work is so special and unique to need a wide set of specific methodologies? Are we professionals or unexperienced kids playing with something bigger then them? I think that, like any other serious professional, I can stay concentrated on what I am doing for hours. I honestly don't need a pomodoro to keep myself focused for just 25 minutes. And if somebody can stay focused for no more than 25 minutes I am afraid that he should really rethink the way he works.

To respond to that, I'm not so sure whether there is an apples-to-apples comparison between the professions and type of work performed. The basic goal is to be productive. Regardless which profession you are in, you find your own tools and techniques to accomplish that goal. I would treat this technique or something else as a chance to improve. Certainly with corporate emails, phone calls, and other interruptions it's certainly not easy to concentrate for a good chunk of time and being productive (I'm not even mentioning about Blogs/RSS readers, Twitter, etc.). As I already mentioned, if you think you are already productive and can concentrate quite well (without any new techniques), great, pat on your back.

On the drawbacks-front he says --

Said that, in my opinion there are also other important drawbacks in the pomodoro technique. What should I reply to my customer who is calling me, possibly from the other side of the ocean? That I am in the middle of my pomodoro and I can't break it? ...

I don't think the technique is that restrictive. Obviously if that call is important you would take it and discard that Pomodoro, attend the urgent task, and get back to Pomodoro when you are ready. Let's not complicate it more than what it is, this is just a way to being more productive cutting down on the distractions. I don't see this as a hindrance to the team work or on your efficiency to deal with more urgent matters.

Have you used Pomodoro technique, how do you like it?

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