A Breath Before the Start

Well, I had a friend look at my blog the other day. He is someone who I respect in the technical world, knows heaps, and is just an all round good guy.  (For those wondering, the man is Richard Banks, who you can find here.  He is also worth a follow on twitter, over here.) Anyway, he pointed out some spelling and grammar issues, which I was expecting.  He also gave me some tips and tricks for blogging, like the code colouring and where I can host files without any ads, which I will incorporate I to my last few posts.  I'm not going to tidy every post, just the last two. Hope to do that this weekend.

Then he ended his advice with a “but”. He wanted to know why I was looking at using prefixes on table names, and my thoughts on a "decoupled" application. And he recommended that I review some other patterns, such as the repository pattern. Taking this advice, I did some searching on the web to look into the repository pattern, and as he suggested I reviewed my thoughts and the post content.  Following this, I have decided that he is right (as he usually is).

As a result, I am going to make some changes to my approach.  Firstly, I am going to write an updated version of my audit code.  One without named prefixes, that makes more sense with regards to naming conventions.  (As you can see I am dropping the prefix naming convention on the data layer.)

Secondly, I am going to write a decoupled application in the correctly.  One that has it’s layers decoupled, not the modules within each layer.  This means some changes to my intentions, but I can make that work.  I am still going to maintain the audit functionality in a separate database from the Line of Business database, and I will explain my reasoning's for that when I release a new version of that little project.

Thirdly, I am going to write code that has a designated purpose.  I am going to achieve something that I can use as a vehicle to learn.  It has been said that without vision people perish.  Probably from not having a goal and aimlessly wandering around til they did. I am hoping that with a goal to aim for, I can be more focused on doing and learning rather than wandering down a dark alley.

As an aside, this is the point of me coding and writing blogs about what I am doing and my thoughts on it all.  I am wanting to learn, and I just happen to be in a position where I can ask people to check my blog and code.  If one stops being teachable, stops wanting to learn, then they are, in my opinion, not worth listening to.  I don’t want to be one of those people.  Other than fixing formatting issues and typos, I wont be altering or removing the previous posts.  It is a reminder to me of mistakes I have made to teach me not to make them again.

So, my next post will detail what I am aiming to do with my audit scripts, which I will do try to get out as soon as I can.

Direction

Direction is very important. It is one half of velocity, is a part of vision, and can help you work out where you are. In a project situation, the direction the project takes starts at the very start of the project.

What happens when you don't have direction? There is no purpose, so why continue. There is no confidance that your doing the right thing, so why bother. Without direction you don't know where your headed. You don't know if your using the best tools to get the job done right, first time.

With direction, on the other hand, you can make decisions that are going to get you in the general vicinity of where you want to be. You can plan what needs to be done before you do it, not react to changing tides of what people want.

However, there is one important thing about direction. (Well, probably more than one, but this one is up there.) You can't just start moving in any direction. You need to know where you are headed, atleast generally speaking, so that the direction you take helps you get to where you want to go. Otherwise the gain you have in moving becomes a liability, and can get you into as much trouble as doing nothing at all.

Direction by itself is not good. It needs to be coupled with vision, or what the end goal is. This can be something simple, like a project and a deadline, or more complex like a 5 year plan. But without direction you will just be chasing your tail.