bencoffman.com/blog - readings

How Will You Measure Your Life

Ben Coffman — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:12:32 GMT

I’m a man, it’s in our blood. From day one as boys we measure who is faster on the playground, who can drink more milk in the lunchroom; as adults we do the same, hopefully with more respect and not so overtly. When I saw the title of this book, read the short synopsis on the back of the book and found the writer was a Rhodes Scholar I knew I couldn’t pass this up, especially since I find myself asking questions along these lines more and more as a father.

The book in one sentence: if you talk the talk, walk the walk...stop reading here if you like.

The best example he gives of this, is the amount of time you spend with your family. If you ask most family men they will say family is their highest priority, but when you break down the hours spent with family vs. a carrier, he has found he sees contradictions. He goes on to explain how parents rationalize the beginning years of a child’s life is time they won’t remember if the parent is not present, noting study after study of how initial 5 years of a child’s life are turning out to be the most important years to be involved. Stating these years end up shaping the child for a lifetime of success or hardship, socially, financially, and intellectually.

Overall I can’t decide if I like the book or I think it’s too cheesy/inspirational. It’s one of those reads I will either come back to frequently in the future or forget the words ever tickled my brain.

The Singularity Is Near.

Ben Coffman — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:26:30 GMT

Close to 1 year ago I embarked on reading The Singularity is Near....1 year. This book reads like a person trying to achieve his PHD from Stanford who is giving and defending his dissertation. Now multiply that times 5. Is it interesting, yes, is it painstakingly full of details, absolutely. Forget Lunesta, want to fall asleep in 10 minutes flat, I got something for that and it was written by Ray Kurzweil.

Keeping it short, I will cover the part that had the biggest impact on me. The three areas Ray feels will be affected the most

1. Genetics
2. Nanotechnology
3. Robotics

GNR as Mr. K likes to refer to it. Ray proposes these areas are where the most radical changes will happen and where changes that are happening will cause the highest impact. With genetics, after describing the improvements that will be made very thoroughly, he finishes with saying genetics will ultimately be irrelevant because man’s next iteration in evolution is machine. He then goes on to discuss how nanotechnology will affect the human race, by providing a number of examples from nano bots that remove cancer to nanobots that can actually provide nutritional value to you making traditional eating obsolete (he does say we will still eat, for pleasure, similar to how we still have sex even though we still use birth control). Finally he discusses the impacts of robots. This is pretty much the same old stuff you read in sci-fi books, except Ray provides a dizzying amount of details to back his claims.

Are there big words, yes. Does the reading get a bit verbose and boring at times, no doubt about it. Is it provocative, especially to the faith going citizen, you betcha. Would this book scare people if they read it and truly believed it, you bet your hot pants. For me personally, I’m a full fledged Singletarion. I don’t think there is a person on the earth that doesn’t think machines will continue to advance until they are beyond human mind computing capacity. Knowing this it’s fun to speculate the societal outcomes, the outcomes for humankind, what is conscientiousness and finally the roll this will play in changing peoples faith.

I would love to discuss this book with anyone who has read it. Please read and post or hit me up on twitter at @coffmanben.

Next I'm moving onto How Will You Measure Your Life

The Lean Startup -- Eric Ries

Ben Coffman — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 04:07:14 GMT

I really wanted to dislike this book. I mean c'mon, how could reading a book help one make a better start up? It's similar to reading a book about how to drive a golf ball right? My response, kinda, the great golfers still have a coach telling them the insider secrets like, how to stand, what to think, best ways to judge the wind, how much to practice, and how much practice is too much practice. The Lean Start-up is this coach. Eric Ries has a pragmatic approach to getting a product to market quickly, measuring the results of the launch and learning from the launch to apply to the next release. He doesn't tell you how to make your business he tells you how to make your business better. (cliché statement of the day)

Eric, revolves the entire book around 6 primary subject matters.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
5 Whys
Innovation Accounting
Build-Measure-Learn
Split Tests
Pivot Points

With each of the above topics he divides them into three categories vision, steer, accelerate and explains how the aforementioned points relate to building a successful product for your company. Eric translates this to not only start-ups but large established companies backing it up with real world examples from Intuit, a major established company to Dropbox a respective start-up when Eric was working with them.

I'll only focus on a few topics because some are very obvious in their meanings and others I really care about and wish deeply that all companies would follow. This should lead us right into Innovation Accounting:

To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for start-ups—and the people who hold them accountable.

This definition says it all and to it I simply say "Yes, Damit, YES!" Eric adds to innovation accounting and discusses vanity metrics aka "success theater", which I have seen a bajillion times. In short vanity metrics is the work you do to make yourself look better aka a super bowl add to bump traffic and give investors the appearance of traction.

The second point I want to cover is Pivot Point. I agree with this term also and so does Andy Grove, who covered the exact same topic in his book he wrote more than 10 years before Eric's, "Only The Paranoid Survive," except Andy calls a Pivot Point an inflection point. A pivot point is when you examine your data and the data says, our current plan is not working and we should refocus on what we think is this a more profitable route. I'll use Andy G's example because it's better than Eric's. When he was the CEO of Intel the company made memory, at one point Andy and team decided they could not compete with the countries who were heavily subsidizing memory manufacturing, consequently he realized the real margins were in processor innovation and manufacturing. The rest is history.

If you're interested in making innovation production better or possibly trying to shake things up in your organization enough to keep you awake at night this is a great read.

Sh*t My Dad Says

Ben Coffman — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:59:32 GMT

When I was a kid, I liked to work my math problems from left to right on a page and not from top to bottom. Whenever I would ask my Dad for help he would say he would only help me if I worked my math problems from the top of the page down and I would always reply, "Would you tell Jimi Hendrix to flip that guitar right side up and play with his right hand?"

Fast forward to me graduating with my undergrad degree in computer science. I think to myself, psshh what does my Dad know, I just graduated with a degree that is quite nearly a degree in math, I bet I could run circles around him now...then I have a come to Jesus moment. When this happened my Dad, a psychology major, and I were sitting at the kitchen table and he was a few strong beers in (we are talking 11% folks), somehow a division problem was tossed out from my Mother and my Dad strait up answered it before the numbers even began to tickle my brain, he then follows the answer with a "I thought you were good at math," in a slightly mocking tone. Now anybody that understands a father-son relationship knows this is code for, GAME ON. "Come on Pops, you know division is my weak area," I say. He replies with, "Let's do some multiplication then." 4 problems later I'm beginning to realize I might be out gunned. "Pops let's do some basic addition, the foundation of all math", I say ~~heavily~~ slightly mockingly, "And I'll show you how one generation of evolution changes everything." My Dad calmly says, "No problem," gets up from the kitchen table walks to the fridge and gets another beer. My mom throws out one last problem, it's addition. As my Dad is opening his beer he simultaneously speaks the correct answer, and throws the cap in the sink halfway across the kitchen. My face goes white and I'm left sitting there trying to comprehend everything that just happened. Somehow the only thought that keeps going through my head is W.T.F. As my dad walks by the kitchen table holding his newly opened beer he takes a quick swig and delivers a line, which felt, he had waited 2 decades to deliver, "Maybe you and Jimi should go practice your left to right method again." What else could I do at this very moment but laugh and reply to his statement with, "What kind of beers are those anyway?"

Now imagine an entire book of moments like this with an explicitly speaking father and you have 150 pages of laugh out loud reading. It's cheap reading, I know it, but right now I'm deep into Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, which is a good read so far, but I needed something less serious to enjoy on my Christmas break. If you love shoot from the hip, anecdotal, witty statements only "that father" or "that uncle" can deliver, you will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Happiness. You Better Find It -- Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Ben Coffman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 02:24:50 GMT

At 7 years old, many questions are offered to be answered by adults who have more “wisdom.” One of their favorites is, “What do you want to be when you grow up.” Arguably, at this point in your life is when you offer up the job you think will give you the purest form of happiness.

As we get older things get a bit more convoluted. We have dreams of what we want to be, how much we want to have, and often through the wear down of life, we adjust and know life will go on for us whether we achieve them or not. The primary question is will the things we want and pursue bring us happiness if they are achieved. Additionaly, in the pursuit of them will we lose out on some good life. We all know the line “the only thing in life you can’t get back is time.” Money, status, career, relationships come and go, you can lose them and gain them back, time however, not even God’s or God offers to give that back...if you’re into that.

This being said, time is the only constraint to happiness. Now finding it? Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,” does a wonderful job at explaining on how, even after he had achieved “enough” at 24, enough is not what brought him happiness.* He does a great job at exploring his journey to the CEO of a prosperous Zappos. Tony later dicloses of investing all his money into Zappos; what he learned along the way and what really brought him happiness, hoping that what he learned will benefit you.

This asian persuasion business man gone New York Times Best Seller does a wonderful job at giving you the tools to help you exactly pinpoint what makes you happy. For the nerds out there Tony gives you charts and graphs to use in your pursuit of happiness. For the more socially inclined Tony describes the path to happiness through personal stories, and what to look for in yourself.

The book at times is a bit cheesy and over the top, but Tony is unquestionably on to something. My words of wisdom I generated from this book: The only definitive proof we have in this life is you get one of them. With this knowledge a successful life should be defined in spending more than half of it happy, because when it’s over there’s no getting the time back!

*Tony was promised 40 million, when he sold his company LinkExchange. 20 million was paid up front and the other 20 million was paid to him if he stayed one more year. Tony left 20 million on the table in that last year because he was not happy.

It's All A Game

Ben Coffman — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:08:12 GMT

Manipulating people, if you want to get anything in life it requires more than for them to see your point of view, it requires them to believe in it enough to act upon it. In Neil Strauss's book, The Game, he talks about the society of pick-up artists. Sound ridiculous? It kind of is, that is, until you see it work, then it becomes very real.

This book is more a study of human behavior. In the end Niel states he comes to the conclusion that real long term relationships are not built off a 15 minute routine you use to gain someone's attention relationships are built over a real connection, learning more about each other, and sharing time with each other. This book is a fun read, but written for male readers.

What was my interest in the book, I'm married, how could this be practical to me? If you look one step further than the guise the book uses to deliver the message, Neil is teaching, through personal stories, how to understand human behavior. My goal was to look past the pick up artist study and try and understand how I can apply his social interaction to a work environment in order to achieve my project's goals in a larger company where you need other teams help, but they don't necessary have to help you. Here is where I am torn, if I simply tell you the great things I have gained from this book, then my coworkers see what I'm trying to accomplish which in turn means I have to change my plan altogether (Assuming they read this, this is a big assumption).

After writing the rest of my blog entry I erased it and decided it would be in my best interest in every way to simply encourage you to read the book and gain your own insight.

Road Schooled, By Becky Collins

Ben Coffman — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:24:11 GMT

Phone rings, looking down I see it’s a number I don’t recognize. What the hell, I pick it up. “Ben, it’s Becky,” says a raspy voice on the other end of the line followed by a quick low smoker’s chuckle. A smile hits my face so fast, it’s as if someone slapped it on me. “I wrote a book, it’s called Road Schooled…”

I’ve been told in order to truly appreciate someone’s writing you have to know who they are as a person. I’ll do my best to put Becky into words. Imagine Janis Joplin’s voice and charm, Hell’s Angels attire (when she is on the road), and a drip of compassion that surely came from motherhood. Put them all together, blend and poor over a bike big enough to make your dad’s bike look like a moped, bam, you have Becky.

When first reading Becky’s book you will realize she’s a people’s writer. She’s writing this book for her, others like her, and to hell with everyone else. You could almost say she is writing a guide, maybe a bible, for all independent female souls. Women not afraid to live on their terms, women who might share a few moments in their lives with you, but deep down you know you are more or less the ketchup on the hamburger, understanding she will be doing what she does with or without you. As you get further into the book the better the picture is painted; you can almost hear Bob Seger’s Turn The Page playing against the imagery of the movie Easy Riders. You don’t hear the words on the pages, you hear the feelings and the moments she is sharing, making it easy to visualize a lone women rider on a dusty desert road, hair feverishly blowing backwards; internally speaking her thoughts to one person, herself….and now you.

The book Road Schooled, is a quick enjoyable read. I recommend getting a cold beer, sitting down and letting Becky share her words with you on a sunny Sunday afternoon. With this said I’m going to put an excerpt of one of my favorite scenes.

“We wandered through the parking lot for one more look at the bikes before we headed to bed. I was admiring one bike, obviously well loved and well ridden. It had a leather bound rod about 18 inches long, hanging from the throttle. I wondered what it was for, and thought it may be some kind of cool tool that I should have. The owner of the bike had ambled over, he was a grizzled, scary looking guy, but I have learned a long time ago that looks can be deceiving, so instead of being intimidated by him, I asked him what the cool leather thing was. He told me it was for smashing windshields when someone on the road pissed him off. I learned two things; sometimes looks are not deceiving; and I had no use for the cool tool. Someday, I’m going to have a patch embroidered and sewn to my riding jacket that reads 99 %er.”

I believe this could be the start of something good with her writing; I have high hopes she returns to put more of her life on paper for all of us to share.

Giving Is Good -- Andrew Carnegie

Ben Coffman — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:56:02 GMT

I embarked on the journey of reading Andrew Carnegie’s (AC) autobiography. It was unquestionably one of the better I’ve read (Miles Davis, John Nash, Michael Milken, Jenna Jameson, Jack Welch). The first half of the book has him describing his life starting in Scotland, moving to America and his progression to wealth. You can see from the very beginning he was able to recognize a skill that would be marketable and not only master it, but let the opportunities this skill brought him be the segue into his next venture. The second half is him giving away his money and his interaction with American politics.

AC had no real skeletons in his closet, nothing entertaining from the perspective of drama, drugs or sex scandals. His biggest fault viewed by some may have been his labor practices to his employees. I view this as one sided. He was very generous for his time to his employees; he made more than 20 of them millionaires in the later 1800’s. Just to make this clear, these are people that had no financial risk in the company itself, but he valued their work so much he made them partners and gave them stock options in a time when doing that for employees was simply unheard of. He was one of the first to set up a grocery type store for his employees. He gave them the opportunity to run the store and set the prices ensuring the cheapest cost to the employee shoppers possible and he sold the store supplies at the same discounted prices he received for them when he bought them in bulk for his companies. An example of this was his ability to provide coal at a fraction of the rate the employees where paying outside of the company store. The coal was so cheap they could not only afford proper amounts now the employees were able to have it delivered to their homes. He was also one of the first to set up a type of credit union for his employees, in which he offered more secure backing of the money than the government at the time and he would loan out this money to employees so they could attain houses at interest rates they could afford.

When AC had reached a point he felt he had amassed enough wealth, roughly around 300 billion in today’s dollars he started on his journey of giving away around 95% of it. To put this in perspective, if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet gave away every last dollar they earned it still would not amount to half of what AC gave away.

One of my favorite points about this autobiography was how many iconic people he was casually friends with: Mr. Twain, Mr. Morgan (as in JP), Mr. Roosevelt among many others.

I was disappointed to finish the book. I had become accustom to hearing the nightly stories AC was offering. It felt as if he came back for a short bit to speak with me and upon finishing the book it was his time to leave again. Cheesy I know, but it really is how I felt.

On to my next book, it was going to be the Zappos guy’s book, but a good friend of mine Becky Collins wrote a book of her own, Road Schooled. It’s about her journeys of traveling around on a big fat honk’n Harley Davidson. I can’t wait. She’s got character and personality that is unique and fun, I’m confident she can let it shine through in her words.

iPhone iOS Development And Silk Teddy Bears

Ben Coffman — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:33:35 GMT

Have you ever seen a silk teddy bear. They're nice, soft, smooth and comforting. They take something scary and unmanageable like a grizzly bear, and make the animal manageable, gentle and silky smooth.

In the just-released Beginning iPhone 4 Development, authors Jeff LaMarche and David Mark team up with Jack Nutting to take the ever-growing and changing iOS and break it down into manageable chunks. In this informative and light-hearted read, the authors bring the new edition with updates to key subjects like Core Data, Grand Central Dispatch and iPad/iPod programming specifics. Full of step-by-step instructions and intuitive pictures, Beginning iPhone 4 Development serves as a perfect guide for the novice yet remains effective as a quick reference to the experienced developer. In the end it's all about having fun, making an app you want and not about getting frustrated at trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of iOS. With their latest offering, LaMarche, Mark and Nutting get you on the right path.

Great Expectations

Ben Coffman — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 04:57:50 GMT

I finished it. My review: very boring. Seriously, I know this is a classic but Charles Dickens can spend two pages (as in 4 pages you read and 2 physical pages) describing a room and the sad thing here is, I'm not being sarcastic, he really did that in this book.

There supposedly are two endings to this book, a dark one and the real one (it's happy, kinda). Let me ruin it for you. Pip gets the girl. Now I just saved you 500+ pages of reading.

Don't read this book! Anyone that tells you it's not boring, is wrong. If you like boring by chance, read it.

My next conquest is "The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel of Wealth." Apparently Warren Buffet gives this to all his super rich buddies (Bill Gates) to read on donating their money away. Warren believes dynastic wealth is rarely used wisely and uses this book to show how Andrew Carnegie believed this also. Incidentally Forbes magazine ran some numbers and if Andrew had his money in today's dollars it would be 300 billion dollars. Way WAY more money than any of our richest boys today.

Hopefully this book will not be boring, though I will say I'm very biased on liking biography/autobiographies.

Beginning iPhone 3 Development Exploring the iPhone SDK

Ben Coffman — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:29:55 GMT

I'm done! After a summer of surprises, swings, and roadblocks I finally finished this book, a few months behind schedule, but it's done. The last objective-C book I read was by the de facto in Mac OS X development Mr. Hillegass, (my post) I embarked on the journey of reading a book on iPhone development with the man in iPhone teaching Jeff LaMarche. Jeff is every bit as good at breaking down complex topics and making them seem easy as my .Net home skillet Scott Hanselman. In short these dudes are just smart, but they'll never tell you that and they write some good books.

This book is an easy read and provides hands on examples on how to use many of the tools provided with the iPhone SDK 3. The book is spot on with it's examples, but I'm betting new Objective-C users might have trouble following along when xCode 4 comes out. xCode 4 is quite a bit different graphically than 3 and may render the step by step instructions in this book out of date.

Overall if you are into programming on the iPhone, this is a great book to start, given you have a base working knowledge of Objective-C and an advanced understanding of programming in general.

Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X -- Objective C

Ben Coffman — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:10:59 GMT

I'll keep this post short. I read this book to prepare myself for iPhone development and give me a deeper understanding of Objective C. This book is probably the best book to start learning Cocoa Programming currently on the market. It gives chapter by chapter examples with exercises to follow along with. The only shortcoming of the book is that it's a bit dated to what the current xCode version is. A few of the examples might take the novice for a spin (which means it took me for a spin, sometimes a quite frustrating spin) because the step by step instructions are not exactly correct due to the fact some of the menu items have changed or been rearranged. Outside of a few minor issues, like the one I mentioned earlier, it's a pretty fun book and I would recommend it to other experienced programmers. Hopefully Mr. Hillegass will come out with a newer version.

Things covered in the book

Memory Management

Target/Actions

Helper Objects

Key-Value Coding; Key-Value Observing

NSArrayController

NSUndoManager

Archiving

Basic Core Data

Nib Files and NSWindowController

User Defaults

Using Notifications

Using Alert Panels

Localization

The list keeps going, it really covers all you need to know for having a strong hold on the basics.

Naked : David Sedaris

Ben Coffman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:38:00 GMT

I love David Sedaris (translation, my reviews are very biased). I've heard he is ridiculously funny when he does readings, but I've never had the chance to see him. In the second book I read of his, Naked, he provides the reader with insights to his childhood through teenage years as perceived by his funny, tainted, and feminine perspective. What made the book a funny read was picturing a little, unknowingly gay 10 year old thinking and saying what I was reading.

Here is a brief snip-it of David at home after a day at school where he watched the drama teacher act as a mime:

"I went home and demonstrated the invisible wall for my two-year-old brother, who pounded on the very real wall beside his playpen, shrieking and wailing in disgust. When my mother asked what I'd done to provoke him, I threw up my hands in mock innocence before lowering them to retrieve the imaginary baby that lay fussing at my feet. I patted the back of my little ghost to induce gas and was investigating its soiled diaper when I noticed my mother's face assume an expression she reserved for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks."

The book itself is darker than what I have come to expect with Sedaris. I believe in the book Naked, he is revealing more of the hardships he encountered in his life, taking a more raw approach, hence the title Naked. Surprisingly, some of the chapters leaving you feeling sad. The title of the book is based off the last chapter where D. Sedaris lives in a nudist colony for a few weeks. My interpretation of this closing chapter is him comparing clothing to personalities. After not wearing clothing for weeks, he could look at fully dressed people and know what their body really looked like, what they were trying to hide physically, and what image they were trying to convey. Realizing, much like personalities clothing portrays a portrait that people want you to see, when in reality the true you is something different.

Running with Scissors -- Augusten Burroughs

Ben Coffman — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:24:05 GMT

Augusten Burroughs, sounds familiar, oh yeah that's right, William Burroughs. Did Augusta choose to use a nom de plume because his real name has a direct correlation to Winnie-The-Pooh? Let me guess, he choose Burroughs because he too is gay and wrote a shock novel similar to Naked Lunch like Willy B.?

Augusten isn't quite as revolutionary for his time as William nor is his best friend Jack Kerouac, but then again Running With Scissors has a clear story line, a welcome difference from Naked Lunch. Running with Scissors is a memoir of Augusten Burroughs (Christopher Robison). It intimately describes his life growing up and how far it fell from the norm. It is a fun read if you really enjoy setting the book down every 20 minutes, looking up at the sky in retrospect at what you just read and saying "what the fuck!" Would I recommend reading it -- maybe. I would classify it as the Jersey Shore of novels; nothing revolutionary or mind bending, but you just can't turn away from watching the characters with their skewed sense of reality and themselves.

NUnit, NUnit Mocks, NMock2, DotNetMock, and Selenium : Pragmatic Unit Testing In C# with NUnit

Ben Coffman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:12:32 GMT

If Scott Hanselman lives and die's by unit tests, why don't we all just fall in line? It seems the nerd community, has an uncanny ability to adopt silly things quickly. Things like xkcd.com or the idea of ninja's. I have yet to laugh at one xkcd or understand how ninja's are relative in any shape or form, because of this I felt I needed to read up on unit tests, specifically for C#, to find out if it's just hype or this is something development shops with a strong QA team really need to look at.

I read two books that covered the topic of unit testing. The first book was Foundations of Programming (recommended by Scottie H. himself and is free) and the second is Pragmatic Unit Testing In C# with NUnit. Both of them start off with the same old song and dance on how you might have up front costs of introducing unit tests to your code, but the stability these tests provide over the duration of your codes lifetime will cause such dramatic cost savings for the company, it would be foolish not to explore the idea. What a compelling sales pitch, a pitch salesmen, for just about any technology, have used since the beginning of technology in businesses. I'll cut all the used car salesman tactics out and state the most intriguing argument to unit test. It increases code stability and it's easy.

The next question I asked myself: What do I exactly test in the code-base I am working on? In Pragmatic Unit Testing (PUT) they give us an acronym to use in order to answer this question. BICEP.

BICEP, breaks down as such.

Boundary Tests

Inversion Tests

Cross Check Tests

Error Tests

Performance Tests

These are the 5 major aspects one should test, according to PUT and it provides unit testers with a place to start. The next major topic in discussing how to test code is decoupling one piece of code to another. Does your code talk to a middleware? How do you test if middleware is not done creating your service to consume or if middleware is down? In steps NUnit Mocks, NMock2, and DotNetMock. These 3 mock frameworks provide the developer with the ability to feed your tests predefined values, values decided by you. Without going into how to use these mock frameworks, I believe that outside of a few isolated situations they should not be used. The entire purpose of testing your code is to test that you are getting information back that fits the criteria you are looking for. If this information, that is beyond your control, changes on whatever level for whatever reason, you as a developer need to know. Putting in mock objects hides this.

Since I work for a web shop, the topic of web UI unit tests interested me. PUT recommend using Selenium. This makes sense because it still uses the nunit style of testing keeping all your tests to one testing style. Selenium seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to WaitN or iMacro, but I feel keeping all your testing in the same style outweighs the cons of not using Selenium. The more desperate testing sources you introduce, the more confusing it is for an outsider to step in and see the whole picture when learning the code, especially when it's not contained in a single solution.

Finally, I recommend reading both of the books mentioned, but lets be honest most of us care so little about unit testing we'll be lucky to read all of 1 of these books let alone all of both. If this is the case I recommend PUT, while the first few chapters read like the high school teacher striving to gain his students social acceptance, it's an easy read and you can jump into the book at nearly any chapter and get the exact information you are looking for on unit testing. This is something I wish all programming books could achieve.

Predictably Irrational

Ben Coffman — Sun, 10 May 2009 01:22:48 GMT

In Predictably Irrational Dr. Ariely discusses how even irrational behavior is predictable. More specifically how irrational economic behavior is predictable. He calls his study of irrational economic decisions behavior economics. Many facets of the irrational behavior in humans is covered in the book. I'll pick a few of my favorites, relativity and pricing and apply them to interests in my life, girls and coding.

Many books have been written for people on the best way of attracting the opposite sex. In his book Dr. Ariely boils this art form down to an easy notion, relativity. Humans need a direct basis of comparison for everything in their life. This means, when a person is looking for a mate they should make sure their wing person is uglier than them. Dr. Ariely conveys that every human basis's worth using comparisons, not on the function the object offers to their life, but on the function the object offers in comparison to a comparable object, in this instance another person. A great example of this is pointed out in the first chapter "The Truth About Relativity." He uses the $275 bread maker made by William-Sonoma (W.S.) to assist his case. The bread maker sales were lower than expected. The problem being consumers didn't have a basis for comparison. How did consumers know what a quality bread maker was? Worse yet, consumer were comparing W.S. bread makers against coffee machines. W.S. wants consumers to buy both products and not view one as a substitute for another. After deliberation W.S. decided not to discontinue the bread maker, but to introduce a second larger and more expensive model. Thus, giving customers a basis for comparison. As a result the less expensive bread maker flew off the shelves. Having another bread maker to compare against consumers were no longer confused if they wanted a bread maker or the coffee machine, they knew they wanted a bread maker and could easily make a decision on quality based on comparing the two products. Bread makers are not humans, is what most will think. Wrong. Humans base beauty off comparison, don't believe me, walk into a bar with a model, see who gets more attention, then try walking in with a weight watchers "point counter" put an appetizer in front of them and watch how much attention you get while your wing person forgets to breath as they devour the spin dip.

Now offering nerds an insight to the book. Let's say a programmer has written the next killer application (app). This app will change the world, but how does one price an app? In chapter ten "The Power of Price." Dr. Ariely covers this dilemma quite well. Dr. Ariely states two mechanisms shape the expectations on the price we pay for things. One is belief and the other is conditioning. An example of belief is provided with a humorous viral video which has a man following around the now famous "free hug" people carrying a sign that states "deluxe hugs." Watching the deluxe hug video from an outside perspective it's apparent there is no difference from one hug to the other, but the deluxe hug huckster makes people believe there is a big enough difference they pay him $2 for what should cost nothing. Examining the second mechanism, conditioning, Starbucks provides insight. Starbucks made people comfortable with the idea of a $4 coffee, when they were used to paying $.80. Starbucks conditioned the customer with incremental price steps into finally accepting that a $4 coffee was indeed worth $4's. Now looking at the developers app, the developer should ask themselves if there are similar apps. If so, does the developer want the consumers to view the app as the premiere expensive app, or a cheaper competitor? Does the developer believe that people will value the app enough to pay for it? Will the developer have to condition the consumer to the cost by gradually working the consumer to accept the price the developer wants to charge?

As cliche as it sounds, once I picked up the book I couldn't set it down nor could I stop thinking of the application it has. I realized I had fallen victim to the marketing ideas portrayed in the book. Oh well, now I know.

Hey America It's Time To Start Reading Again.

Ben Coffman — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:49:57 GMT

The Kindle --

My thoughts: I'm sold, I'm in love and if everything keeps on the right pace the Kindle should entirely change the way collegiate educational systems sell books. Jeff Bezos (Amazon's founder), come here and give me hug.

Let's look at the device, then discuss how the Kindle could be one aspect that will push Amazon right through the economic downturn and how the Kindle has the potential to affect the educational system.

The Kindle is an electronic reading device that uses a technology called e-ink. E-ink makes reading an electronic device easy on your eyes. The battery on the Kindle will let it run for two weeks without a charge. It also allows you to download a book nearly anywhere, by using the Sprint PCS network (a possible saving grace for a slowly dying Sprint). On the Kindle one can email pdf's to the device for reading, surf wikipedia, and browse most of their favorite blogs. It also allows you to add annotations to pages, search through entire books (a favorite feature of mine) and with the Kindle 2.0 you can have it read to you.

From a nerd perspective it's the little things. When I'm reading in the morning eating my Coco Puffs, I continually find myself fighting to keep the book open to the page I'm reading. New books always seem to want to shut. With the Kindle, the book is always open and a page turn is one quick button push. I also appreciate when I'm discussing a book to a friend; I'm able to run a quick search and pull up the exact excerpt from the book. Finally, when I see a book I want, I download it in little over a minute. No driving to the book store (assuming they have it in stock), no waiting for the book in the mail and best of all it was considerably cheaper than buying the book new, in most cases half price.

What excites me most are the possibilities for the Kindle. If universities start to adopt the Kindle (UPDATE: After the release of the Kindle DX Jeff B. has announced they will be working with universities as early as this fall), it could be revolutionary. Since most books purchased on the Kindle are half off, the device will pay for itself in two semesters under normal course load, possibly one. Students will not have to carry 3 or 4 books along with a laptop to various classes throughout the day simply a laptop and a Kindle. No more waiting in long lines at the book store. 1 click for each book you want and you're done. Being a grad student and working full time means I have to step out during lunch to get my books, a one click option would be a nice time savings for me.

Examining the Kindle from a financial perspective gives Amazon a positive outlook. Imagine every university adopting the Kindle in the same way every college student adopted iPods. Amazon.com would be the iTunes music store of the book industry. Setting the bar for digital distribution and providing the platform for Amazon to break into the hardware industry. All these aspects build upon Amazon's core competences while staying with it's strategy of delivering books cheaply and easily. Wallstreet felt the same way I did and Amazon saw a 10 point stock jump when rumors of the new Kindle started to circulate a week before it's release.

With Amazon's latest release of the Kindle it is posed to establish a "lock-in" for digital book distribution. They're a company to keep your eye on, the next couple of years could make or break the Kindle and redefine how American's and American students read and buy books.

The World is Flat

Ben Coffman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:52:59 GMT

There are too many damn bloggers. Thomas Friedman a 3 time Pulitzer Prize winner, eludes to this in his book "The World is Flat." As I write in my blog, I can't help but agree, but I'll ignore this idea so I can deliver how this book is applicable to technologists like myself.

Friedman starts the book out discussing the "10 flatteners" of the world and how these flatteners lead to the "triple convergence" (For a brief description of these ideas check Wikipedia). For most of us nerds, the technologies he discusses are nothing new. Using a big picture approach he wraps up these ideas with the triple convergence, provided points of view that, at the very least, will challenge you to think. It’s after he discusses triple convergence when the book really starts to get interesting. Friedman begins to discuss the affects these ideas are having and will have on societies, politics, outsourcing, wealth, schooling, and religion. He covers these ideas quite extensively, so I'll just cover a few of my favorites (which happen to be very touchy topics): politics and religion.

In discussing the effects of the triple convergence, Friedman refers to Karl Marx's manifesto which, in part, says in a purely capitalistic society, there will be no wars over religion or politics because those will affect business. Friedman then looks at how companies with global supply chains in two countries will work together, because, despite their differing political or religious views it will be in their best financial interest to maintain peace, in fear the company's who's supply chain is in their country, might pull out. This in turn causes the country to loose large revenue generators. Losing these generators would cause a loss in funding for schooling, technology, home grown business and the silly religious or political wars they would like to engage. Intriguing concepts...I think so.

For technologists this book should light a fire under your ass. Friedman reiterates how we have lead the race on technology, but as technology is becoming cheaper and other countries are focusing more on education in science and technology, we the American technologists, are not just competing with our fellow American's for a job or for the race to the next big idea. We are now competing with many other countries in the world. This also means we are collaborating with many other countries.

Overall the first half of the book was pretty boring, but as he started into the application of the topics he covers in the first half the book, the book became very interesting. I recommend this book to any techie who is interested in how tech fits in the big picture.