openlowcode

One big negative aspect is that everything tends to cost around $10/month, from a verified Twitter account to an app to teach English to my children.

Now, it may be small change for single people with Silicon Valley salaries, but I have a family to feed on my French experienced engineer salary, and I basically have around $150-$200/month left for entertainment for the whole family.

I cannot buy 10 internet services, whereas I could perfectly afford buying, say, a dozen or so $50 software a year.

I have no problem with the 'contact us for pricing', but I am astonished at the number of dark patterns that some big Internet e-commerce sites use. Maybe time for some regulations or monopoly-breaking?

Imagine you have to communicate something precise to me and I am stuck in a meeting:

- you send me a picture, it may be ambiguous;

- you leave me a voice call, I have to go out of the meeting room to listen to it

- you write a message, it just works. If there is info to use, I will easily copy your message in any application (Excel, Word, SAP...).

Also, text can be stored easily, so I will keep an archive of your text, probably far less an archive of your voice message or diagram, as they are very heavy.

It is interesting to think about it in the context of coding.

There is a strong opinion (which I share) that text coding is much more efficient than 'graphical' alternatives due to text flexibility and nice features ( easy compare, universal medium...)

I think the choice boils down to a few questions:

- do you need relational data, or something more simple, or something more flexible ?

- do you need transaction integrity ? Transaction integrity is a nice feature, but you can also design all your code so that if something blows "in the middle", it is somehow repaired automatically in a further event.

Maybe a third point: most of our relational / transactional database technology is quite old. Could we do something better than SQL query language, common database types, and the actual database code that was very optimized for magnetic spinning disks, but maybe is not optimized for SSD ? Maybe, we would need something like SQLV2.

And my god how much hype bullshit is inserted in those technical discussions.

it is impressive for me that the game has managed to reproduce a real-world phenomenon: people forced into slave labour.

Don't we play MMOs exactly to have this kind of adventure ?

I think you should look harder for content you like, whether a Youtube channel that fits your interest, or a specific topic you want to know more about. Internet is at its best when you actually have a personal goal, and look for relevant information and people.

Also, you should probably limit the time you spend randomly browsing for the internet. It is just like TV or video-game: this makes your brain tired in a strange 'addictive boredom' if you are half-passive in front of it for too long.

Actually, it cannot be totally realistic for sure, else it would become a ... space program. Still, I am convinced we can make an appealing game with the main real-life constraints of early planet colonization.

But as for the choice of time period, I find the close future much more appealing than the far future. It is easier to immerse into, and I expect that, in the years to come, the players could actually related there experience in the game to the events unfolding in real life.

Also, the period of the first pioneers is probably more exciting than the period where you manage complex cities. If you play Civilization, the first turns have a special flavour that you do not get anymore later in the game.

In my humble opinion, there are two problems to e-mail, and they are already solved in a product such as gmail. - Searching through the data works very well with gmail. I can retrieve all mails relevant to a topic very well. - Displaying conversation in an easy to read way.

I think it is nice to make very elaborate products, but simple technology, such as e-mail, is extremely powerful, as it is universal.

A slight comment: I usually look at the cost of the service for 3 years (the average time, say, I keep a laptop or smartphone). $5 or $10 per month is $150 to $300 for 3 years. That is quite a lot.

For which country ? Or maybe you divide the world between San Francisco peninsula and places that do not exist ;-).

Face masks

I think that due to the economic crisis coming, companies may be at last serious about cutting costs. The truth is that when everything is fine, people is companies often prefer their comfort to taking the risk to change things to be cheaper.

Enterprise IT is certainly very inefficient at all levels, starting with using technologies that are incredibly inefficient with hardware (I can understand you do not program in C / assembly anymore, but man, all those awful scripting languages...). I could quote also commercial software with licence prices unrelated to the value delivered.

I hope this may be an opportunity for my open-source lowcode project, that could replace many commercial software at a very limited build and run costs.

https://github.com/openlowcode/Open-Lowcode

Not sure it is ageism, but I hate how scrum-master (young people who has a few days of training and made arrogant by their 'master' title) take agile methods as a pretext to disregard any experience we built the hard way on the way to manage IT projects.

Hi,

First, glad your cancer is under control. Take care. Your health is really important. The happiness in your family is also really important. I would like to mention also that the years you will have now are unique, especially if you have children. Enjoy it as much as possible, that time never comes back.

On the other hand, the focus on getting financial freedom seems weird to me. Similarly to being a reality TV star, I think the chances to succeed are quite low, and it may even not be a path to happiness. Struggle is a big part of the pleasures of life, remove the struggle, and you are missing something.

I think you should focus more on having a nice life, with a nice way to earn enough money. If you keep your skills relevant (which you should anyways), you will generally find a job until retirement, and if you do not like your job, you can easily change. So you should not sacrifice your life now to edge a non-existing risk.

Now, if you have a huge passion and want to work a crazy amount to make that a success, you should for sure go for it. But this is a different story with a different objective, and, maybe, if you are succesfull, as a side-effect, you will get financial independence.

Hi,

I am 43. I am probably atypical for my age range, as most friends would have started with an Atari, Amiga or Amstrad computer, and I had a PC at home from maybe 1984. I always complained that I had crappy games as a result, but for the rest, the PC was fine. I still remember text only Microsoft word.

I started programming in Microsoft BASICA, getting lost in GOTO hell. Then, Pascal, and, at age 13, I put all my savings in buying a C compiler (costed 100€ or so), and also getting a graphical library through shareware (remember ordering the floppy disks by mail).

At university, I moved from C to java, and I more or less stayed there as java is good enough / common for my trade in entreprise IT. I also do not like scripting languages, and prefer compiled languages (faster, errors found earlier).

In France, the use of chloroquine has become a huge debate, with a mediate-savvy professor advocating loudly for it: Professor Raoult.

From what I understood, in the end, it does not work so well, even if there are some subtelties (said professor is mixing chloroquine with another drug).

Stupid comment maybe but I wished there was a global list.

I was surprised though at the limited number of sites inhabited continuously since earlier than 2000BCE. I would believe that good natural sites (natural harbors with a river) would have been continuously inhabited since neolithic.

Hi,

I am not sure what your point is. Instant deployment is an advantage of web architecture: you have nothing to do on the user device for them to use the new version of your software (barring some rare issues with browser cache).

On the other hand, so far at least, a web application does not age so well at the timescale of enterprise software (an application will live 10-30 years in a company). So we have an obsolescence problem often, i.e. a 5+ years old application will need to be rebuilt to use more modern technology, often at a high cost.

Originally, web architecture mixed in web pages presentation and business data, a result of an hypertext architecture being used for transactional software it was not aimed at at the beginning. Sure, there have been billion of dollars of investment in web technology since then and a lot of things have improved. However, I have the strong feeling things are still messed-up, especially for developments 'in the wild' for team who do not have strong architecture skills.

The worst thing is idling browsing on the web. It really drains energy

Then, if you say you have free time, there is a high chance you did not look hard enough. Is there really no document you could read, noone you could talk to ? Very often, when I find myself idle, I realize there are things I could do.

If really you are idle, check how much you really need to stay at work. In some environments, you could very well take some time off, or spend less time at work, and nobody would care. 7

In some work, you need to do sometimes 14 hours working days for long period. It would be fair, and is sometimes accepted that in exchange you go back home at noon on some other days.

I would recommend, by order of priority - sleep enough and drink enough - eat well and perform 30 minutes exercise a day - invest in relation with your loved ones (parents, children, significant others). If you are in the phase in your life where you do not live with your family (young adult), have a few valued friends.

If you have all this, whatever happens at work will not kill you, and this is a good thing.

I know what you mean. While web is unavoidable in some area for the 'instant deployment' benefit it brings (in consumer internet...), it lacks in my opinion a solid architecture fundation (separation of business data and layout...), and we pay a high price for this (costly development, high cost of obsolescence...). So I prefer to avoid web development when I can.

Also, many development environments (not only web) are not keen with 'medium skill' developpers: the architecture is too complex that it is a mess just navigating around, and it requires self discipline and experience to organize your development. There should be, in my opinion, a 'safe place' for people whose job is just to transcript business requirements into working code without requiring extra 'architecture' skills. Most IT departments of companies have this 'medium skillset' population, and as a result, there is a lot of waste and drama.

With that in mind, I spent around 1 year of my private time designing a low-code framework to provide enteprise IT developers with a 'medium skillset' an efficient tool to develop business apps. This is fully open-source, so do not hesitate to have a look and get involved ( https://openlowcode.com/ )

Hi, does the following 10 minutes tutorial makes it easier to get what the framework does ?

https://openlowcode.com/10-minutes-open-lowcode-tutorial/

Julius Caesar "Gallic Wars" is certainly worth reading, translated from Latine to French, so probably, the English version is very good also.

In French, some of the best ones include Chateaubriand "Mémoires d'outre Tombe" (Memoirs from Beyond the Grave), the epic life story of a French writer from the American Independence war to the end of the French monarchy mid nineteen's century.

For my job, I often have to google a specific technical issue. It often directs me to company blogs, which I read happily.

I must say that, while I read happily the blogpost, I never once contacted a company because of a nice / useful blogpost they wrote.

The reason is that it is so complex to work with a new provider in a big company (purchasing process...) that we often prefer to stay with existing providers.

I developed a working product as a side project, and I am now trying to sell it by working on it part-time and keeping my full time job (actually tring to keep find of strict 9 to 5).

There are positives and negatives about my situation:

+ no risk for my family (except I am very busy)

+ I can actually experiment my product at my current jov (kind of customer 0)

+ my employer (large european corporation not in the IT business) was actually surprisingly willing to let me work on a side project, and did not bother me with IP.

- So far, I did not manage a single real customer (though company only started 2 months ago). I may have a better result if I was full time.

Hi,

getting users to invest time in a new product is not so easy. One of the fears is that someone will invest time in a product that will be abandoned. There are graveyards or abandoned softwares.

I am now working around half-time trying to sell my own side project (https://openlowcode.com), and it is quite hard.

In my opinion, Ramen (asian noodles) deserve some room in the junk food podium. There is even an essay from Paul Graham quoting them (Ramen profitable) ;-).

Hi,

I think you should start by making sure you set clear directions, and everybody understands. Then, just also be open to listening when people have something to say.

A surprisingly low part of your time will be spent as a 'policeman'. Most people do not try to cheat or be lazy, they just want to understand and be listened to.

As a manager, you are not the dictator of a small country. You are a sailing boat captain who is looking at the waves, and asking his team for the state of the boat.