Month: April 2010

… calls Code 8, which it started six months ago. This is an initiative where it hires 70 of the best students from public universities to train them (because they apparently do not have the right market skills) [sic] to become domain experts in the eight areas it is working on. This is an accelerated programme as the graduates focus on the proof of concepts that …

When I read this in The Edge (blunt one at that), I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. This is such a blatant spin on the truth that the quote is evidently self-conflicting. I guess that the editor must have found it rather weird too and decided to add a few words to highlight it.

The programme claims to actually hire the best students from public universities to train them because they do not have the right market skills. Since I know some of the people who are actually under this programme, I have to say that they are most definitely not the best students from our public universities. In fact, they are far from it – very far from it – there are candidates in the programme who barely passed their undergraduate degrees and none who actually came in anywhere near the top of their class.

However, I will grant that it may have been the original intent of the programme to take in our best and brightest to accelerate them with the right market skills. If that was the case, then it just reflects extremely badly on the state of our public universities when our best students do not have marketable skills. I think that our local universities may take offence at such implications. Again, I would have to say that this is not true. I know many local graduates from both private and public universities. The good ones have many marketable skills, good communication skills and hard technical skills.

Unfortunately, I think that if the CEO is pointed out as selling vapourware, he will just claim to have been misquoted by the press – as our local leaders are oft to do. Our local press corps must be made up of the most incompetent reporters that are hard-of-hearing if they are always misquoting our leaders – and we all know that is not true. Our local press may sometimes be a bit short-sighted and need some glasses to help them see clearly, but I doubt that they are intentionally incompetent.

So, while I think that the programme is a good one, because it takes in some of our local graduates who lack any marketable skills and gives them a second chance by providing skills based learning through real-world projects, I do not understand why our leaders have to lie spin the story like that.

I went for a local musical production with a bunch of friends tonight. The musical was a spoof of random Broadway musicals but with a Malaysian twist to it. Boy was it good! It is showing for only a limited time only and I would totally encourage everyone to go watch it. You won’t regret it!

Seriously, go buy your ticket now! It’s hilarious! However, a lot of context is needed to understand it so don’t drag your expat friends along without giving them a thorough induction in all things Malaysian. The musical touches on all things Malaysian such as – our love for food, our adoration for Pak Lah, how much we like our neighbours down south and much more.

I particularly liked the reasons that they gave for why people should not venture down south – because their water is not fresh and the food here is better!

Now, let me talk about the venue. This was my first time to The Actors Studio @ Lot 10. I did not even know that there was anything on the roof-tops of Lot 10. Turns out that there is a bar, restaurant, gym and a small musical theatre. The construction of the facility seemed a little naked but it was good enough for its target audience.

Next, let me give you a list of the songs that they sang:

1. I Feel Hungry
2. Under the Tree
3. I’ll Eat Anything
4. Empty Chairs at Plastic Tables
5. I Go2 Gt D Msg 2U
6. Love Letters
7. SMS
8. Sambal Nights
9. Mak Cik Life
10. Over the Causeway
11. If I Were a Tan Sri
12. Bare Celebrities
13. The Low Class Bad Word
14. No Pork No Pork
15. Bo Doh
16. What I Had for Lunch
17. Peas and Rice
18. Mamak Mee-Ah

Sounds tasty, doesn’t it? 🙂

I observed my 3-year old nephew playing games on the iPhone the other day and a random thought occurred to me – Apple has won the next generation market. We now have an entire generation growing up with the touch interface, thinking that is how a computer is supposed to work instead of using a keyboard and mouse. Genius. Apple has a corner on the touch interface, which is protected by patents.

This got me thinking – a dangerous thing – we are set for a massive change in the world of UX design and computing usage in the next decade or so. These kids will fully expect everything to have a touch interface and will probably not even learn typing skills when they grow up.

This is where the iPad comes in. Like I mentioned before, I do not see it as an e-book reader but as a souped up tablet. As a tablet PC with a touch interface, it will find uses where there were none. It will open up markets that were previously untapped. Apple has the product that will carry them through the next decade.

I am quite excited by it all but I won’t be buying one as yet. I am still interested to see what other competing products will come out of their competitors before deciding on which tablet to bet my money on. For now, a single source of useful tablets is a dangerous thing to have. The market has enough room for several – maybe Apple, Nokia and Freescale – but who knows.

PS: I wonder what will happen to Apple after Jobs.

I was asked to help conduct a job-interview last week. The candidate claimed to have some direct experience in embedded software programming. Unfortunately, the candidate met me. I only focused on asking the candidate questions about things that the candidate had direct experience working in.

Firstly, the candidate claimed to have written software for a variety of processors – almost a dozen of them. However, what the candidate failed to mention was that they all belonged to the same architecture – ARM. This is a slight-of-hand trick. Unless the interviewer knew his stuff, he would not know the variety in the ARM eco-system. But this stretching of the truth is fine with me – because at least the candidate had some experience writing software for one of the world’s most popular processor.

However, what I could not forgive was that the candidate did not know the thing that sets the ARM7TDMI processor apart from its predecessors – the introduction of the Thumb instruction set. The candidate claimed to have worked closely with the ARM7TDMI. Since the candidate failed to know the architecture, this limits the ability of the candidate to do embedded software programming. In order to do embedded programming well, the programmer needs to know the quirks of the hardware architecture and exploit it to their advantage.

Secondly, the candidate claimed to have helped solve some problem with their current project, dealing with null pointers. So, I asked the candidate how they found out the problem was the problem. Turns out that the candidate used the technique that I dub – random bandaging – trying random things until something works and then claim that the problem is solved, without understanding the under-lying cause. That is a problem that I have with my apprentice as well, but it is fine because we can always ask for proof and train our staff to investigate things.

However, what I couldn’t forgive was that the candidate – when asked what a null pointer was – looked at us incredulously and claimed that a null pointer was a pointer to a random memory location! Sigh. I thought that the name of the pointer should be a dead give-away. If the candidate had mentioned that it was a pointer to the null or zero memory address, I would have given half a mark. If the candidate could tell me that it is architecture specific and is just defined as an invalid memory address location, I would have given full marks. But it most certainly does not point to a random location – and that is a failed understanding of what a pointer is.

Thirdly, I wanted to test that the candidate could actually write code and understand how the code works. So, I got the candidate to write a simple for-loop that counts from 0-99. Thankfully, the candidate got this right. Then, I asked the candidate what would happen if I compiled the code as it is. The candidate didn’t know what would happen – the code block would be optimised away by the compiler because it does not do anything. That was still fine. Then, I asked the candidate to output the numbers on screen. The candidate used printf to do it.

So, I asked the candidate when is printf not supposed to be used. Surprisingly, the candidate said that it should not be used in interrupt routines. I was seriously impressed! Then, I pressed the candidate for why it should not be used and the candidate said that it was slow. Again I was impressed! Finally, I asked the candidate to think of any reason – even one – why it was slow but the candidate could not think of even one. Then, the candidate confessed to have only read the information online and did not actually know the reason why. Fair enough.

To me, at the very least, the candidate had a bit of working knowledge but I would still classify the candidate as quite a noob when it comes to embedded programming. Experienced nonetheless though – but still a noob.

Let me add – knowing the right answers to the questions is easy. Knowing why is the difficult part.

There’s this article from MIT that claims that, “Now educators at MIT have shown that homework copying is associated with greatly decreased learning — and have developed changes in instructional format that reduced copying by a factor of four in certain physics classes at MIT.”

Now, that triggered a thought in me because – I have rarely done homework in my entire life and have largely survived on copying work off my friends at the last minute. I think that the piece of research makes one major assumption – that people learn by doing homework. The motivations for the copying need to be investigated as well.

Personally, I only copied homework because I was too sien to bother with the homework. Most of my life, I was ahead of my peers and the homework wasn’t adding to any of my learning. In fact, I do most of my learning outside of an academic setting, primarily through practice. I have learned enough to earn my way to a PhD in a field that I have never attended any formal classes for.

While it can be considered a little unethical to copy homework, there is no choice for me except to do that because the homework is usually compulsory – it is often included as a percentage of the final grade. I do not understand why homework has to be made compulsory since it does not add any value to learning at all. I care about learning, not homework.

I see this as a potential issue with one of my nephews too. He is barely four and his teachers are already complaining about his behaviour. When they try to get him to repeat things after them, he refuses to parrot because he already knows the stuff and doesn’t see the value in parroting. He turns around and surprises them weeks later by demonstrating what he learned, without towing the line. The teachers need to understand that he learns things very quickly and absorbs knowledge on-the-fly like a sponge.

I think that the study actually shows a weakness in our pedagogic methodologies. Some people need homework in order to work through the steps for further clarity. Some people need homework in order to learn through repetition. Some people do not need homework because it bores them thoroughly.

Maybe we should consider different modes of learning and not try to force homework down everyone’s throats.