wroolie

Thanks to my new friends in Dalian and Shanghai

November 19, 2009 by wroolie Leave a Comment

Iâve been back for two days and am finally getting over the jet lag from the business trip to China.

In Shanghai and Dalian, I met with 9 software companies in an effort to find more offshore partners for Overpass. I learned a lot from the companies I visited. They ranged in size from a few companies with thousands of developers to companies with only two developers.

Some of the software companies were located in large software parks with state of the art facilities. A couple were located in residential-area office buildings far from the centre of Shanghai.

There is definitely a lot that China can offer the software offshoring worldâin fact, they already are. On this trip, I was also advised to look at Sichuan, Chengdu, and Nanjing as some other destinations.

I also met with some expats in the area who gave me a great deal of insight into the software development situation in these cities.

I came home with piles of notes to record and thoughts to put down before they evaporate. Itâs been busy the past few daysâso this post is pretty brief.

It was a great trip and I am totally in awe of the hospitality I was shown there. I thank everyone who showed me around, showed me their companies, and generally made me feel very welcome.

Iâd also like to recommend the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) who set up the meetings for me. If your looking to get into China, give them a call.

Now, the real work begins.

5 Days in Shanghai

November 11, 2009 by wroolie 2 Comments

Iâm sitting on a plane from Shanghai to Dalian for my next set of meetings with software developers in China. I havenât blogged in a while. This is a small plane and there is no entertainment. This is the perfect time.

Iâve spent the last 5 days in Shanghai. It was my first time to the city and I, like most people generally, am very impressed with the size of it. Shanghai is huge! There are so many people and it makes London look tiny.

The Expo is less than six months away and there is a lot of pride that it is being held there. The Expo logo is everywhere. I hope to return in the summer when it is held.

I stayed in a tiny room at the Rayfont Shanghai Xuhui Hotel. I wouldnât recommend it, but it wasnât too bad. My room was so small, I could see every part of from any angle. The shower and toilet were separated from the rest of the bedroom by a clear sliding glass door. Luckily I was by myself or I would have look away when someone used the toilet. The internet was slow. When I paid the expensive price for the breakfast buffet in the hotel, I could get bacon, eggs, crinkle cut chips, and spaghetti. However, I was on the 31st floor of my building (the hotel has several tall buildings) and had a nice view of the city. I even watched a thunderstorm roll in over Shanghai, which mixed with the lights of the evening, was strangely beautiful.

I got around mostly by taxi but took the metro when time permitted. I felt much more comfortable on this trip to China than I did on my first trip in August. I tried to get by on Mandarin as much as possible and many very hospitable people helped me around. Generally, everyone pretty much found my Mandarin to be amusing. Iâm really glad I can speak itâthere are many people (especially older people) that I would not have been able to talk to at all unless I could do it in Chinese. This was important, since travelling by myself got pretty lonely.

Most of my days were spent in meetings. I met with 6 software companies in Shanghaiâranging from huge companies to very tiny ones. Itâs been a very educational experience. Most of the time, I spoke with General Managers and chairmen, but I really enjoyed getting a chance to talk with people on a technical level. All the companies were very hospitable and I made some new friends. Some people even read this blog before my visit which was nice.

I didnât bring a good camera and mostly took videos of everything I saw. The trip was for business rather than sight-seeing.

The flight attendant on this plane just announced that the temperature in Dalian is below zero right now. It was hot and muggy when I arrived in Shanghai on Saturday. Iâm looking forward to Dalian.

In Dalian, Iâm going to meet with a few more companies and a few friends. Iâm looking forward to the trip. Dalian, I hear, is big in outsourcing but mainly focuses on Japan and Russia. They donât do much business with the West. Still, Iâm eager to see what they are like and discuss some things with them.

Hmmm. Adventures in software development. Who would have thought it would be this exciting.

Sorry if this post is all over the place. Itâs been a long day.

It only takes one error . . .

November 2, 2009 by wroolie 3 Comments

A good developer hates to see an unhandled error in his or her code. If a user sees an error that tells them what line your code failed at, this is not only a potential security risk but also a major point of embarrassment. Bad developers think itâs totally acceptable.

I have this kind of argument all the time– âWhy donât you put an error handler here in case the calling code (or user) enters some bad data.â I get the same response ever time, âBut, how often will that actually happen.â I have this conversations over and over. The only thing that changes is the person Iâm having the conversation with.

When youâve coded for lots of different companies, you start to learn how common this is. You have a few very dedicated developers who cater for errors I canât ever see happening, but you get a lot who are just winging it and stop coding when their work reaches bare functionality. When you see a news story about how a big site was hacked and all their data compromised, itâs not all that surprising. A site can look very professional on the outside and be very shaky underneath.

I was trying to order some travellerâs cheques from American Express today. You may have heard of the company. Iâm sure they spend top dollar for software developers. Iâm still not sure what I did to get this (I wasnât looking for bugs in their software), but I got a big ugly ColdFusion error message:

The error is a standard IIS-delivered unhandled exception error. I know the lines of code that failed. I can even click on a link to see a stack trace. So, you know, I guess itâs embarrassing for the developer (or at least I hope so). But the bigger issue is that I canât trust the site any more.

Somehow, I entered a zero where I should have had a value (and the code is trying to divide by zero), but I honestly donât know where it was done.

Do you think Iâm entering my credit card details after this? I mean, what else are they not paying attention to?

Actually, it looks like American Express sent me to another site (with AmEx branding) called FX4You. But still, it reflects badly on American Express.

The ugly truth of software development is that there are loads of standards, but not many of them are adhered to. Testing always goes out the window to fit delivery deadlines. Code reviews are non-existent in most organisations Iâve worked with. The flip-side is that projects loaded with too much bureaucracy frequently fail to see go-live. There is a happy medium and it is difficult to find.

Back in 2000, when everyone was going crazy about e-Commerce, I was working for a small company looking to build an online shop. One day, I mentioned that I did not trust most websites with my credit card details, someone started to poke fun at me– âIsnât it ridiculous that our web developer doesnât trust buying things on online?â But, even then, I knew how easy it was to leave security holes open in software. Just because I took precautions in my code, I knew not everyone else did. Now itâs almost ten years later and I think most people are more wise to security, but I still would take a site that uses Paypal over a custom-built credit card engine any day.

Maybe I can buy my travellerâs cheques through the American Express site safely, but I wonât risk it.