Lines (and lines and lines and lines...) of Code

I shall post a summary of all of the interesting things I've learned in Software Deployment and Evolution when I'm revising for the exam. In the meantime though this is a good example of why any company that thinks lines-of-code is a good metric compared to 'bits-of-functionality-actually-implemented' is a company to stay away from.

The Daily WTF: The Ultimate State Selector

My professor explained that he was once tasked with investigating a contractor who had recently failed deliver any real functionality - despite an increase in code size and hardware requirements. It turned out that the contractor had created a script to auto generate sutb/empty classes... thousands of them. Of course large, successful companies don't get where they are without precise standards and expectations on deliverables. So just how long did the contractor get away with this? Surely at most a month or two before someone said "Where is feature X? No... 3 years!! The contractor spent 3 years and a million dollars delivering nothing before anyone guessed something was amiss.

There is room for improvement.

Machinarium

To avoid doing any homework I have started playing Machinarium.

You point and click your robot through a beautifully designed environment, solving puzzles and helping other robots. It isn't too difficult and it's the first game I've played for more than 10 minutes since Grand Prix Legends (which came out in 1998). Best of all it only costs $20!

Ramses the humanoid

We seem to be getting together a blooper reel for our final year project (the humanoid robot named Ramses). This is one of his many 'freakouts'.

Nassim Taleb's essay on The Limits of Statistics

This essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is fantastic:

The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics

The abstract doesn't quite do the essay justice. It's main contention is that there is a realm in which statistical and model based decisions are entirely flawed. There is no model that can predict the impact or return of rare events of great consequence.

Nassim Taleb is one of the few people whom when I read I feel entertained, smarter and generally inspired to be a better human. I read in this article that he follows a paleo diet (which despite not really following at all I have a lot of time for) and earns $60,000 a lecture; how can you not be inspired by this man?