5 Things

I have been avoiding fullfilling this commitment for a while now. Just before the end of the year, dear Roberto tagged me with the 5 things meme. After a long contemplation, I realized that perhaps using SAP's sdn is probably not appropriate to talk about these 5 things. After all, they have nothing to do with it and these are somewhat personal in nature.

Let's get to 5 things.

1. My favorite Computer books are probably "The Psychology of Computer Programming" by Weinberg and "The elements of Programming Style" by Kernighan and Plauger. Yep, the copy of the first one that I own was published in 1975. Gasp, these books are probably published before a lot of my colleagues were born, but the wisdom they contain is universal. If one can get over the Algol and Fortran 77 examples, etc. the issues that still need addressing in development teams, managing projects, programming environments, after 30 years is still dead on target.

The term "egoless programming" was coined by Weinberg. I frequently wish that some of my standards colleagues have heard the term.

2. Given that the books are ancient, this does not mean that my computing experience (or implicitly my age :-)) is. After all, I am a product of a country where computing knowledge, teaching and resources got developed in the 80s. One good (or bad) habit that I have learned from structured programming days though is to be critical about the designs on the paper first before you commit them into action. In order to optimize batch jobs in the mainframe days, I would mentally trace all my programs before I loaded them during my freshman years. As a result, I had a tendency to try to get things right in the design first. This aspect made me a human debugger for other people's code and assignments early on in my undergrad years. Perhaps this is why I became overly critical as an architect...

3. My grandmother had a very profound impression on me growing up. She lived with us in my formative years. She was one of the first women judges and prosecutors in Turkey. I always knew that she was behind me and my accomplishments. She was also the kindest person, providing free help to other people in our neighborhood from street vendors to shop owners on legal matters. As a result, she was called "mother" by all.

I wonder now whether I would have made her proud knowing that her shoes would be impossible to fill and my trials are nothing in comparison.

4. I love to sing and play the guitar (somewhat). When I first started singing, I was very nervous and did not want my mother to know. (she is a great soprano). Therefore, I never practiced at home. When I told my family that I was singing Bob Dylan on stage when I was 15 for my first concert, she was choking hard on her food. Well, she had never heard me. Later on I was the lead singer in our school rock band and sang to a stadium full of people during the band competition finals in my native land. Perhaps this is why giving talks today does not frighten me as much. After all, what can be worse than a stadium full of rowdy teenagers? Rowdy EJB or WS developers? Naah.

5. I really don't like Country music, although I love folk. Interestingly enough, I am very much in the mood of singing "Not ready to make nice" these days despite the way the song is categorized. The song recently got a grammy and now everyone knows it. However, it is the ultimate pissed off song to sing. Love it.