Category: Productivity

Low Code Software Development

What is prompting this post is some recent articles on my cellphone Google News Feed talking about how much faster “low-code/no-code” development is.

I coded my first computer program back in the early ’70s.  I have been an interested (mostly) bystander since then.

There have been many attempts to make software development quicker and more efficient.  Some have worked.  Some haven’t.

Some of the earliest improvements to speed up software development were caused by doing more/most of the software development in “higher-level” languages rather than Assembler.  Someone reported that if you had a good optimizing Fortran IV compiler you could hire 4 Fortran programmers for the cost of a single Assembler programmer and get very nearly the same performance out of the code that was created while getting nearly 4 times more software production.

Then along came the idea of “4th Generation Languages” that were designed to allow you to tell your computer “what” you wanted to be done and then “it” spent its time during the “compile” phase figuring out “how” to do it.  The results were spectacular in the speed of development but the resulting code wasn’t always very efficient.  The original version(s) of FOCUS was one of many examples of “how-not-to” replace a very fast data-entry system in Command Level CICS/Cobol with a much slower rapidly developed equivalent in FOCUS.  I heard a report that they had to quadruple the staff using that version of the Application to get enough productivity.

SQL is still the most commonly used and efficient language of this type.

Another idea that has come into and gone out of fashion is the “low-code” or “no-code” approach to software development.  This can speed up the development process significantly.  The catch is the “tool/interface” you are using has to be able to fully support the solution of the problem you are trying to solve.

When programmers started having to “customize” the code after it had been built by the no-code environment this caused problems until something like “round-tripping” was invented.  Up to that point every time you generated a change with the no-code environment you made all your customization(s) disappear so you have to “re-apply them”.  This was very inefficient.  So the no-code people tried using techniques like “round-tripping” to preserve the customizations.  Apparently, there was never a really good way to preserve customizations because no-code systems to create customized development appear to have fallen out of favor some time ago.  Now they are apparently back.

One other thing that came into favor and is still a favorite was “COTS” packages that provided limited parameter-driven flexibility for well-understood business processes.  The major brand names on this are products like SAP.

So now people are promoting “low-code/no-code” development again.  But wait, there’s more.  Apparently, they are trying to use Machine Learning and other Artificial Intelligence techniques to leverage up the power of computer hardware and reduce the human element in coding a solution.

I am a great fan of being able to tell my “computer” what to do and having “it” figure out how to solve the problem(s).  And while things are getting better I am not sure how soon that this new trend is going to succeed in un-employing countless journeyman software developers.

Tom M

ps. One of the no-code developer systems is called “Divi” and it allows you to create a custom-built WordPress-based website without coding.  It is on my TTD list to implement and start using.

 

 

 

 

 

Is your Windows 10 PC lagging/stuttering Part 2?

In part 1 I addressed some of the most important things you can do by changing your software settings and running utilities to cleanup and defragment your Hard Disk Drive. In this post I will list several common hardware upgrades you could do to reduce your Windows 10 system’s lagging and/or stuttering.

  • Increase the available ram/memory.  While Windows 10 will run in 4 GB’s of ram.  Your system will use “Virtual Memory” aka: Paging File much less often if you are running 8 GB of memory or possibly higher.  This is the single BEST way you can speed up your computer.
  • Upgrade your HDD to either simply a faster HDD (7200 rpm) or preferably a Solid State Device.  A SSD is similar to a Flash drive but much faster, much larger and more reliable under typical HDD conditions.
  • If you are running a Desktop machine you may be running an “integrated” video card on the motherboard or in the cpu.  You can upgrade your video card for anywhere from a modest $40-$60 to $500 and gain massive improvements in your video display speeds.  I don’t recommend spending much more than the $40-$60 range on a video card upgrade without doing a lot of research and/or asking advice from trusted sources.

TlG

Getting more production out of your Hours of production

I have reviewed a book called Zen To Done.  I have been exploring increasing personal and corporate productivity.  I have studied Lean/Six Sigma.  The WordPress powered Blogosphere is a wonderful place to browse, explore or search in.  So I ran across this blog post on productivity.

As in ALL situations where you are trying to increase productivity, you are absolutely not trying to cause someone to put “more effort” into their work.  You are trying to get either the same production with less effort or get more productive with the same effort.  The key is the “Work Smarter, Not Harder” idea.

Lean and Six Sigma both have their roots in manufacturing.  There have been enormous successes in manufacturing (see “The Toyota Way” for instance).  There have been numerous attempts and perhaps successes in applying Lean/Six Sigma to the service industry and to Knowledge work.  Its not easy to do.  A major stumbling block is being able to measure your productivity.  If you can’t measure it, how can you be sure your changes actually improved your productivity?

Douglas W. Hubbard wrote a book called “How to Measure Anything – Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business.”  He has setup a training and certification program to help business people and consultants get a handle on this.  Jay Arthur is a consultant in Lean/Six Sigma and has written about using LSS in service industries like hospitals.  So it is possible to apply these techniques.

My favorite (lean) story about how to increase productivity in an office process is a “follow the object of the workflow through the process from the object’s point of view”.  When you do this you will find that the object spends significant time waiting between activities.  If you can locate those wait times and if you can reduce the wait times you can speed up the production of that service without actually making anyone work harder.

“Lean” probably won’t help a pure Knowledge Worker situation but it will help a multi-step service business.

I just noticed that using this WordPress application for posting drops out the spellcheck I am used to having.  I need to investigate if I can get this back in, or return to the web interface where I have Grammarly available to grammar/spell check. Hmmm…..

TlG