K.I.S.S.S.S. ©

Composition

Software development is, in essence, the process of breaking a problem down into smaller problems, implementing solutions for those smaller problems,and then composing those solutions to form partial solutions, and so on,until eventually completing the whole solution.

My workspace is Application Development. The objective of Application Development is to achieve efficiency in software engineering. The path to this efficiency usually start out its life with a committee of like minded experts who in the first instance develop a paradigm leading to a framework, finally vendors will produce it into an Application Generator. For The Application Developer this means he/she will often have to change direction during their career. I make this point because there are Information Technology Industry recruiters who are unfamiliar with the career of Application Developers.

Two frameworks I am currently focusing on are the aptly named Microprofile (small enough to fit inside an Application developer's head) and the not so aptly name ROS(Robot Operating system). Currently one of the frameworks I am focusing on to develop muscle memory is REACT. REACT is all about composition moreover it is currently a very much a hireable skill. REACT Components break down the UI into smaller independent components. Components are composed with other components to create greater components, and so on until they eventually complete the whole UI. I only work with software which all about composition when I can find it. Finding good software Application Development Tools is a journey in itself, getting your hands dirty, climbing up learning curve after learning curve.

Code Repository.

I also bring priceless commercial experience to the table, experience I gained by working in companies like Smiths Aerospace & defence Divison and bytel ©, when I was a young and inexperienced Software Developer trying to better myself until I realised I have achieved my objective and there is nothing more for me to learn in terms of experience,on the contrary I can teach people a thing or two who have never got their hands dirty. Smiths Aerospace develop from scratch realtime mission critical systems. bytel was a producer of telco customer care & billing where the Tech lead was one of the top ten database experts in the world and I was lucky enough to see how a large & complex Industry leading product is built successfully

Keep It Simple Software Solution Strategy ©

This website is Hosted on a $32 computer, attached to it is the $32 SSD drive acting as the data centre housed in my private & secret linen closet running a Free Turbo charged Webserver.
The cost of hosting each extra websites is the cost of a domain name only because of a feature offered by the Apache webserver called Virtual Hosting .

I did this project the way I did because I can, because my workspace is Application Development

Change of Direction

One of my commercial achievement was finding an Application development Tool fit for commercial development for my employer at the time, Logsys solutions, Wokingham , UK. Specifically advised them the next time they win a commerce specification(s), they should utilise Serverside technologies, one such tool fit for commercial Application development is IBM websphere.

Square Wheel doesn't Work ?

when I told my colleague, senior developer with 10 years experience in Visual Basic, we should be going serverside, he high tailed it out of the software house, landed a Visual Basic job at another company with a mouth watering salary. Visual Basic is all about Composition and so is any another 4GL.

Prototype! Prototype! Prototype!

prototyping is very important for Application developers.
Protoyping will help us to hit the ground running.
We can test for the Error Handler "friendliness". Ascertain the effort required until we can be on the same page with the product Programmer. The quality of the error handler is the difference between being self reliant or being stuck googling for answers , Stackoverflow , using product mailing list.
If you are experienced Application developer transitioning not to be confused with a beginner , even when you are starting out with a new product you can find product bug(s) , even in a simple Hello World type Prototype. Finding bugs when protoyping thereby ascertaining product stability is the gist of protoyping, I like to include user product documentation "friendliness", Application Developers are not perfect, in our eagerness to get it "working" we sometimes skip over steps in the documentation.

Self Reliant

The one product which does not require any protoyping is the Oracle database. It has two remarkable qualities making it the success it is. The Error Handler which explains clearly the cause and solution making you self reliant (little need to call product support). The other is the quality and accuracy of documentation, which explains first the concepts followed by how-to instructions. The only prerequisite skill needed is knowing how to install it, don't forget to change the default password. , off you go!

If working the oracle database is so good then why don't I pursue it ? I found that working with a database in a commercial environment is a very responsible , however it lacks the creativity of Application Development. As Application Developer you are creating something unique, something never existing before, akin to artistry. This website is unique, result of my own original creativity, for someone who cannot draw no more than stick figures I have achieved a work of art. So if you compare to working as Application Developer with Database Administrator, DBA is a just a job need doing.

I had learned four very important concepts in my software development career
(a) I understood the meaning of Rapid Application Development ,
(b) Transitioning for Application Developers from one framework to another is a sprint not a marathon
(c) discovered open source
(d) realised the secret to Success when builing Large & complex Industrial Applications.

ServerSide application Development is not easy, it requires a lot of personal time investment because serverside comprises multidisciplinary skill set hence the term Full Stack Developer. To be a frontend only developer one requires skills in HTML,CSS and Javascript.

Making correct use of Application Generators to successfully build Applications on time, on budget, meeting the stated requirements is separate discipline, not part of the Full Technology Stack, rather an approach . Fortunately I was lucky enough to have worked at Smiths Aerospace & defence and bytel, slough, UK where I was able to witness and learn this approach .
If you need convincing the approach is actually a thing and not just something I made up to make myself marketable , then just look at this recent report for supporting evidence. Unless you think the whole of the blame comprising $2.84 Trillion losses should be put on the skilled Application developers. " Poor quality software cost an estimated $2.84 trillion in the US alone in 2018 " Source CISQ: [Consortium for IT Software Quality ].
https://www.it-cisq.org/the-cost-of-poor-quality-software-in-the-us-a-2018-report/The-Cost-of-Poor-Quality-Software-in-the-US-2018-Report.pdf "

ReactJS is a framework created to improve software quality to Vanilla Javascript.
Vanilla Javascript in its original imperative form is difficult to read, difficult to interpret by another developer asked to make changes to code, therefore difficult to maintain . Software maintenance is a stage in the software project lifecycle therefore an important consideration. Composability enables abstraction and allows us to understand code without having to care about all the details all the time.

Hobby

Ever since I worked at Smiths Aerospace & Defence I have been fascinated with real time technology. One such technology which allows me to explore my curiousity is ROS Robot Operating System. It is actually a framework with a set of APIs for use by Application Developers. ROS has excellent documentation,youtube videos, cheap Udemy courses to help you get up to speed. it is stable from what I can tell from the protoypes I have done so far , an Application Developer can develop their own automonous vehicles integrating Artificial Intelligence/ Machine learning features like Computer Vision and so much more. ROS's intended audience is most certainly Application Developers.

Hit the Ground Running

The idea of hitting the plateau was first introduced to me by a project manager during a career development meeting. From his view focusing only on programming skills (Application Development Frameworks) would lead to hitting the glass ceiling therefore the Application Developer will remain as Juniors. In that environment Project Manager was not the most senior Lead role either.

I saw positive in his negative expression, becoming an expert Application Developer is a sprint not a marathon. That is exactly the objective of the Framework Vendors to encourage Application developers to take up their Tools for building large and complex Industrial Applications. The smart Tool Vendors have gone a step further, made their product open source meaning Free learning for Application Developers. This is the case with IBM's openliberty.io

Commercial experience is important so far as it lets an Application developer see why some firms remain in the race while others fall away. In my case I was able to appreciate firms like Smiths Aerospace and Defence are still going strong meanwhile other firms like bytel, slough who was initially very successful, then the new venture capitalists came in, had no expertise in what made that company so successful, one wrong decision led to it closing its doors. Then there are firms like Logsys Solution who as far as I could see was never going to remain in the race for long.

There are surprisingly a huge number of people in the Information Technology who didn't get the memo about the hitting the proverbial ceiling. Still charging huge amounts for crash course training on Vendor specific Tools. Recruiter measuring expertise by looking at the number of years claimed by a candidate on a framework in a commercial environment.

Focus

Source Grady Booch

" The United States Department of defence (DOD) is perhaps the largest user of computers in the world. By the mid-1970s, software development for its systems had reached crisis proportions: projects were often late, over budget and they often failed to meet their stated requirements. It was evident that the problems would only worsen as software development costs continued to rise exponentially. To help resolve these problems which were further compounded by the proliferation of hundreds of different languages. The DOD sponsored the development of a single, common high order programming language. The winning design was originally called the Green Language (so called because of its team colour code during the competition), later renamed Ada.

Database Centric Monolith & Microservices Architectures for building Dynamic Web Application

Too big to fit

Some experts have described the motivation for microservices is that it makes the application small enough to fit inside the developer's head. Always blaming the Developer. Other experts like Martin Fowler advocate their is nothing wrong with first developing the application as a monolith then breaking up the completed Application into smaller Microservices. Fortunately I was lucky enough to be at the right time , right place with the right motivation. One of them is partially correct and the other is just nonsense and it is my commercial secret too valuable to share here.

Becoming a Dynamite Application Developer

Following my two HND computing course where I learned four different programming languages, enough to understand that they were differnt routes to achieve the same objective to an extent. I was hired for the next five years in a purely software development roles. There was one common factor in all three of my employment, at the beginning of each employment I was sent on a commercial training to course to learn a new programming language.

Smiths Aerospace & defence was my first employer who sent me to learn Ada at the first week, bytel sent me to learn first Open Road a 4GL then later Oracle Forms , another 4GL. Finally Logsys Solutions introduced me to servlet programming programming. It appeared to me I was always on a learning curve. In all of these skill set I learned the basics used them to get by. I was able to do that

I always assumed this was the norm in the software development, that is to say learn commercially useful programming tools from my new employer each time I would start a new job. I assumed that is the norm until I came across a programmer who had ten years of experience in Visual Basic and point blank refused to undergo servlet programming course.

Ten years experience in a complete development tool like visual basic is good and as a result he was chosen as the Tech Lead for a new project ging from paper based system to digital system. I did however notice that he had did not have the kind of exposure I had to software development practices therefore he was unaware the correct way to develop a software project. Something a Tech Lead must know because he carries that responsibility.

Around this time I discovered open source commercial products. That is to say I could learn commercially used products at the price of a book. I didn't have to make do with very expensive one week crash course.

This is led to what what be considered a highly contentious decision in Information technology. I was going to leave software development and find the tools and train on them. The tools I would train on would support the best practices I had picked up from my commercial experience.

Being trained on Software development Tools before join a software development, taking my time to train on complex framework and architecure, already knowing all the concepts would by my calculation make a Dynamite Application developer.