The Holistic Web

Via Alex, Joel posted about some research results on definined what is a “good” programmer.

He provides some interesting data showing how some programmers can crank the code out 70% to 250% faster than others for the same 10 assignments at a programming course at Yale university.

“There’s just nothing to see here, and that’s the point. The quality of the work and the amount of time spent are simply uncorrelated.”

…If the only difference between programmers were productivity, you might think that you could substitute five mediocre programmers for one really good programmer. That obviously doesn’t work. Brooks’ Law, “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later,” is why. A single good programmer working on a single task has no coordination or communication overhead. Five programmers working on the same task must coordinate and communicate. That takes a lot of time. There are added benefits to using the smallest team possible; the man-month really is mythical.”

Most non-programmers (and probably most programmers) find this counter-intuitive. But it gets back to the old principle: you can’t have 9 women make a baby in 1 month. Some things just don’t scale, and to an extent, software development is one of those things.

Virgin Blue are the main low cost airline in the Australian market. Typical of the Virgin brand in most areas, their image has always been very sassy, a bit cheeky and a lot of fun. I was driving around Sydney tonight and saw they have a new outdoor campaign (primarily bus shelters that I saw). It’s a “your a person, not a number” style campaign. One ad featured a business man sitting in his plane seat, under him it said “Tom Andrews, not 7C”.

I’m dissapointed in Virgin. This is just marketing claptrap - nice words which are disengaged from what the company actually is. It’s a low cost airline and by definition that means packing people into planes as tightly as possible and getting them there as quickly as possible. I’ll remember I’m “Tom Andrews, not 7C” next time they call “boarding for rows 21 - 30 only please”.

To me, it’s a classic sign of old school marketing. Virgin ought to know better. What I’m really interested to see is do they have a technorati search looking for people talking about them? They seem like the sort of company that could & should embrace cluetrain style marketing, but it seems they have hired a couple of ex-bank marketing execs. What a bunch of bankers. Virgin: please prove me wrong, leave a comment here.

Just to give them a hand on any saved technorati searches here’s some keyword stuffing: low cost australian airlines, virgin blue, qantas, richard branson, jetstar.

My wife and I are in the middle of moving ourselves and our small 2 kids from Seattle (where we’ve been living for 2.5 months) to Sydney, we leave tomorrow. Needless to say, that is keeping us busy. Spending 17 or so hours on a plane, plus transit, etc, with a 1 year old and 2.75 year old tomorrow… I’ll start posting again next week (except the one I’m about to post)

For those who were skeptical about my peak oil post last week, http://www.willyoujoinus.com/ might be of interest.

Chevron, the worlds 5th largest oil company, is running a global ad campaign which, while not using the words, is about peak oil. Get this line from one ad: “The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered”. It’s been that way for a while.

Peak Oil: it’s not just for crackpots and conspirary theorists

MSNBC has this interesting article. I’d like to hear more about how they are using this infrastructure to create new ways of working. Class wikis, teacher (and student) blogs, collaborative working, etc. The sky is the limit.

If you are reading this, chances are you’re well aware of the role blogging has played in the past of uncovering scandals and other news not covered in the main stream media, the Downing Street Memo probably being the best known current example.

However, can this extend to covering the behaviour of your average person on the street? The Sydney Morning Herald talks about an incident in South Korea where a girl who let her dog poop in public was identified and publicly humiliated. Is the citizen journalism done right, or gone out of control?

A friend of mine recently launched a site which allows wireless users in Australia to find a wireless hotspot. Could be useful if you’re out and about and get a craving for some wireless!

I’ve had a quite serious interest in the “peak oil” idea for a while now. Short version: at some point, some people say soon, oil will get harder to extract, demand will exceed supply, prices will sky rocket and our oil based economy will hurt - badly.

Hugh blogged about this briefly. Unfortunately, his comment is the one heard most often and as much as I love his blog, I have to disagree strongly. The magic “alternative fuel” isn’t as magic as it seems. Yes, alternative fuel sources will come on. But it’s not so simple. It will take a long time to switch over, and make all the new cars. And guess what making new, fuel efficient cars takes? Yep, oil.

But here’s the scariest bit. Oil is used in more than just cars. Norman Borlaug won the Nobel peace prize in 1970 as a result of his scientific research which reduced world hunger. He developed new strains of wheat (based on the Japanese Norin 10 strain) which dramatically increased crop yields. Some have credited his work with saving a billion lives - particularly in Mexico, India and Pakistan, where a food crisis was rapidly approaching. It could be said that the population growth over the last few decades wouldn’t have been possible without his work and the work of others like him. These strains & their descendants are now the dominant varities of wheat used today. The catch? In order to get such dramatically increased crop yields, more energy needs to go into the system, as food is essentially energy. The source of the energy? Oil based fertilisers. So, to summarise: we have a dramatically increased population size which is not sustainable without oil based agriculture, and we are running out of oil.

I’m not going to be a panic merchant. But I’m also not going to wave the magic alternative fuel wand either. Solar power ain’t no good for growing plants. There simply is no other source of fuel which is as efficient as oil - there is no direct replacement. Many other oil uses have no direct replacement and those that do often require massive work. After decades of trying hybrid cars have only just started to become popular, true commercial electric cars are nowhere to be seen yet. Some people are predicting total collapse of civilisation - and I’m not talking about nut cases here, I’m talking about scientists working in the field. Some are predicting a major depression as society goes through massive adjustments and builds an entire new infrastructure to replace our oil dependencies. Some are predicting a massive die off as we simply run out of food - they say we have more people than the planet can sustain, so the population will have to adjust. And some predict that science (of a form unknown) will magically solve all our problems and life will continue.

Me? I’m not sure. I don’t think there will be a total collapse. I do think a significant depression is likely. I do also think wars will result. There’s a multiple of historical precedence for it - in the past when societies have collapsed due to shortage of a critical resource (such as Easter Island with wood, and the Anasazi Indians with just not enough food due to an over expanded population as a result of a long period of especially good weather allowing them to grow lots more food than their area would normally allow) war has always resulted. Given the belligerent tendencies of some of our world leaders, I doubt that our more “civilised” generation will fare much better.

When will this happen? That’s the big question. No one knows. The most common predictions I’ve seen are later this decade - 2007 is a common theme. Very few are predicting later than 2020. Exxon are predicting non-opec peak oil will arrive in about 5 years. Opec peak oil is probably the most hotly debated issue as Opec claim they are good for decades, but independent scientists disagree with them. Who knows?

Want to find out more? There’s a LOT of information out there. Google & the term “peak oil” will keep you busy for weeks. I hope it does turn out to be a panic over nothing and science will smooth the road. Read up seriously and draw your own conclusions. Maybe your life depends on it?