Mark Watson's opinions on Java, Ruby, Lisp, and AI

I have been following the attempted Yahoo buyout with great interest because I buy into the idea of universal access to online information using many types of devices: PCs, Macs, iPhones, Nokia N800s, secret decoder rings, etc.

In the future that I predict and look forward to, following and exploiting standards will be absolutely required for success. As part of my own research (and fun), I just about continuously try and evaluate every type of online information service (Amazon's web services, Google gdata, freebase.com, dabbledb.com, etc.)

Microsoft's live.com seems to be getting better as far as supporting Mac, Linux, Firefox, etc. The question to me is: how open is Microsoft willing to become?

If I were to sit down and enjoy a beer with Bill Gates and Steve Balmer (unlikely unless they are vacationing in Sedona, Arizona) I would have some good advice for them: do a sea change and embrace open standards, stop selling new versions of Windows and instead sell yearly subscriptions to Windows and Office (slow improvements, no more big "XP", "Vista", etc. releases), and use their resources to make their software and infrastructure flexible, standard, and valuable to users.

If Microsoft does buy Yahoo, it will be interesting to see if they try to force changing to Microsoft infrastructure: they certainly had problems after buying Hotmail and doing a major conversion to Microsoft server side infrastructure. Yahoo is doing some great things with Open Source (Hadoop, Javascript libraries, etc.) and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft will permit using competing infrastructure software for internal systems.

Labels: business, Microsoft

This is a prediction made from a gut feeling and my own experiences: I think that in time, most jobs are going to involve building custom systems using mostly open source projects. In many cases off the shelf products are a poor fit to a business's work flow. On the other hand, building proprietary systems from the ground up is expensive and requires long development times.

Whenever a customer talks about a new system they need, the second step (after understanding the problem they need to solve) is always to identify quality open source projects to use. I believe that the effective developer of the future will:

• Need to know about and perhaps have experience with many open source projects
• Be skilled at reading code and understanding APIs
• Have strong architecture skills for creating new systems with custom code and existing projects
• Know when it makes business sense to turn back improvements to open source developers, even if the license does not require this
• Be a mentor to management on the trade offs of different forms of software licensing and different open source strategies

While there will always be jobs for computer scientists who break new ground and develop fundamentally new paradigms and technologies, most development work is in customized applications for organizations.

Labels: business, IT

I was reading people's opinions on Slashdot this morning about Microsoft's indirect attack on Linux through Novell and saw an example of the New World Order at work: an entrenched corporation fighting against a distributed movement for free and open source software. If you enjoy history, then you know that the rich and powerful have always bought and influenced governments but I believe that the New World Order of Corporate Power is something different:

• More transparent: with the Internet, it is too difficult to contain information and free speech - a good push-back against corporate consolidation and control of news media for their own interests. With more transparency, it is possible for people to be more aware of corruption and control.
• The world is even less of a "zero sum game". When Spain recovered huge deposits of gold, emeralds, etc. in the New World, they increased the money supply (gold) but also spurred other European nations to other areas of technological inferiority that had valuable resources. Although slowed down by energy costs, we now see opportunities around the world open up - someone winning does not always mean that someone has to lose. (In the context of this blog: I see a win-win situation between proprietary software and with free and open source software, with competition between the two approaches as a good thing.)
• Countries/corporations that move early to alternative energy sources will have a large long term advantage as the price of oil increases
• Real value vs. vapor: with the fiat U.S. currency (I have seen estimates that the privately owned Federal Reserve has increased the supply of dollars by about 20% so far this year - the cost of printing money is much less than the current "value" of money!) common people do not own much real equity value: any money they hold has dubious value when a private group of individuals has control over inflation, etc.; people tend to not have much real equity anymore in their homes and are at extreme economic risk when inevitable real estate value crashes occur (they always occur - it is just difficult to say when they might occur). Real value is in industrial production capability, education that enables "high up the food chain" employment and entrepreneur-ship, intellectual property, trade and business partnerships, etc. It is not difficult to see that except for high valued education/job skills and the entrepreneurial success stories, that most real value lies in the control of large corporations and the individuals who have capital and ownership of these corporations.
• Formally third world countries are enjoying a major upswing in the percentage of middle class workers while established industrial nations are seeing a greater separation between the very rich and a shrinking middle class and the poor. This is natural: areas of very low cost of living that can supply well educated and motivated workers draw in business development, research and development, manufacturing infrastructure.

I think that as much as the world looks more "global", that we will see a huge difference in economic success between countries (and trading blocks that share laws affecting business and trade) that either:

• Allow corporations to do business but do impose minimal laws to encourage business growth at all levels. Or:
• Allow corporations to do business and through corruption or other processes discourage business growth and development for all but the largest corporations.

Minimal government is best but some government and fairness in laws and enforcement of laws is required to maximize economic growth and the general good.

I believe that in the future talented people will naturally migrate to countries that provide minimal but fair government and give people good value for their (hopefully small) taxes. Countries like the USA (my country) where a very large fraction of people's federal income taxes goes to pay interest (on previous government expense overruns) to the private individuals who own the Federal Reserve will be at a competitive disadvantage as taxes have to keep rising to pay off previous debts. In a very real sense, government spending overruns enrich the most wealthy people. Small surprise.

What can people do to build more value instead of vapor? A few things come to mind:

• If possible prefer to reside in regions of low tax and high economic growth.
• Prefer more education to less. Prefer training in high skilled jobs that must be performed "on site" and can not be done remotely.
• Prefer investment in corporations with real production value, real property, scarce resources, etc. Prefer to not take out a second loan on your home to buy a new SUV that is better than the one your brother in law bought last week.

The great thing is that we all have control over our decisions in life. While external events can affect the results of our decisions, we still get to decide how to allocate our personal resources and how to live our lives. Self Responsibility = Self Empowerment.

Labels: business, politics

Long term, it is bad news that North Korea has had a successful nuclear test. Short term I am more concerned about the unstable government in Pakistan with their existing nuclear weapons (General Musharraf took control 8 years ago in a military coup, has never faced an election, and is unpopular in his own country - a country with few natural resources, increasing population pressures, etc. - who gets these nuclear weapons if the Musharraf government falls?) Also, many people in the Middle East and Europe are concerned with Israel's nuclear weapons. I believe that it is time for our government to start one-on-one negotiations with countries like Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Public "negotiations" are seldom effective - we need closed door sessions with top level diplomats (private, so egos do not get in the way).

On happier news: Japan is "officially" recovered from its severe 15 year economic slump. Less happy is a comparison between the assets that Japan had to survive economic hard times that we in the USA do not have (and make no mistake, a severe economic downturn will hit us in the future):

• Personal savings: citizens in Japan had relatively large personal savings that they could rely on for living expenses (consumer savings in the USA is close to zero, considering people who increase their debt with second loans on their homes, etc.)
• Japan had low defense costs (the USA spends as much money on defense than the next 24 countries in the world combined)
• Japan had healthy industrial infrastructure with modern factory equipment (the USA is way behind the curve in updating basic infrastructure like factory equipment and our road and highway systems)
• The government of Japan did not have the huge deficits that the government in the USA has.
• The government of Japan did not have the huge foreign debts that the government in the USA has.

Labels: business, economy, politics

My brother was visiting us this week and we had time to hang out and talk. We both have our own businesses. Ron owns a couple of optometry offices in San Diego and I have my consulting business. Different businesses to be sure, but we both are in business not only to make some profit to support our families, but also we care about our customers. This probably sounds "corny", but never the less it is true. My brother has had many customers for over 20 years, and it bothers him to think of selling his practices to completely retire because of his long-term customers. I tend to do many small jobs, usually to get someone through a crunch, to help jump-start a new project or to perform some maintenance on an old project; I care about doing good work and for always giving flat-out honest opinions and advice. I manifest care for my customers by turning down work that is not in one of my fields of expertise.

Even though I made much more money working for large companies as an employee (partly through stock), it would be very difficult for me to now give up owning my own business. Certainly, being self-employed is not for everyone because of differing financial requirements and personalities. I am a reasonably public person because of the books that I have written and a fairly popular web site (try searching for 'Java consultant' or 'Ruby consultant') so I get emails, then telephone calls from people who want to quit working for a company and become self-employed; I don't like the idea of strongly affecting someone's career path, but I do share my experiences and typically ask people first how important these things are to them: flexibility in work schedules (+ your own business), steady income and reduced financial risk (+ employee), paid for benefits (+ employee), predictable work hours (+ employee), and being in control of your own life (+ your own business). I have a different kind of business since I live in the mountains in a small town (advantage: no commuting time; disadvantage: work limited to what can be done remotely) so I may not be of much help when talking with people who want to do on-site consulting. I eased into being self-employed over a long period of time, taking on off-hours consulting jobs while still working for a company. I basically transitioned from solving a few large problems for one employer to solving many small and medium problems for many customers.

I have been talking to you about practical issues of owning your own business. I really admire people who have higher ideals in starting companies to meet some social needs such as producing and distibuting organic food, supporting environmentaly low-impact lifes styles and products, etc. While I think that it is occasionally possible for large corporations to be socially aware, I think that smaller companies have a better opportunity to integrate into communities and service local needs.

While the risks involved in owning your own business are obvious, there is also some degree of stability once you can get started. You might not earn much money during times of economic downcycles, but then you will not lose your job! I think that there is a built in efficiency when you can decide why you want to be in business and what customers (or types of cutomers) you will service - this allows you to stay more focused.

Labels: business

Am I the only consultant who has to spend a lot of time working out details for consulting contracts? I have a policy of never signing anything that I don't totally understand and agree with. I try to get customers to just use my standard NDA and consulting agreement but it is too simple for some tastes. The worse case scenario for me is that someone wants me to do a small job (perhaps 4 or 5 hours of work), we agree on the telephone what I am supposed to do, then they email me their "standard contract" that is many pages long, difficult for a non-lawyer to understand, and usually contains many terms that just don't seem required to me for a job where my customer and I are not sharing any real intellectual property except for the software that I am writing for them and that they will own when I am paid. Some of the worse terms, from my perspective, call for my divulging everything that I am working on (can't do this because I am NDAed with other customers) or say that I can not work on any similar projects for a specified period of time (OK if the work in question is a long term project but not OK for small one day jobs).

Sometimes long contracts are required. Long term engagements can require more complicated agreements because more IP is shared and a consultant might need access to a customer's software and/or servers, etc. Anyway, I think that agreements should be as simple as possible but still protect both side's interests.

PS. While I was writing this, I paused, and decided to offer customers who use my NDA and contract a 12.5% discount. Anyway, I just updated my web site so it will be interesting how many people take me up on this offer over the long term.

Labels: business, IT