Book review - The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture

Some of the readers of this blog might hope this book is about Agile SW development, but it is not. The Agile Gene is book from Matt Ridley about genetics, evolution and how people are people. It starts form really early in first studies about human and behaviors. It tells a full journey to the latest genetics researches.

The main question in the book is the long lasting debate on nature, meaning the DNA and inherited things and nurture, the things that environment effects on people. It goes trough studies from both sides and digs deep in to the main pillars of the both explanations.

One by one it starts to get more obvious that there is no one explanation on this question. Nature plays it part on growing, but nurture also has a big effect on many things. The most surprising there is that genes actually work with environment to make things possible. So those are not only enablers or disablers, but can adjust to the environment.

I have to admit the book was quite hard to follow sometimes. It went such deeply to some of the scientific subjects, that it would have required some more basic understanding of genetics to follow fully. Still mainly it was fun and interesting to read. Matt Ridley knows how to write in very interesting form.

Reading the book I had to change my mind many times. On some points I was sure that genes are the main influencer of what we turn out to be, but then after some tens of pages I again thought that environment is the important thing. I can't remember a book that have mixed my head more during reading the book than this was. That said in a good way.

I recommend this book to those who are interested on psychology, genetics or evolution. It requires interest towards those subject, otherways it becomes too technical to read. I enjoyed it a lot. It goes to the one of the best books I've read this year.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

We Are Not Responsible For Lost Or Stolen Valuables - Why?

Lobbies of so many companies have the sign "We Are Not Responsible For Any Lost Or Stolen Valuables" next to their coat rack. It has always bothered me. I'm coming to visit your company, and you ask me to leave my jacket and stuff here. Then you state that no, we will not make sure it will be safe here.

So what if a company would actually take the responsibility of the jackets and stuff. I know the lawyers would say, that it's too much of a risk to take the responsibility of property of others. Is it really? For me that would actually state that this company is different and can be trusted. It would be an act of kindness and trustfulness to take care of my jacket and stuff while I'm visiting there.

For so many companies, the risk is actually such a minimal, that it would really have any financial effect whatsoever to company's result.

Why companies couldn't think differently and be kind? Why every company always need to cover their backs for everything? Why every company needs to be made from the same mold?

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review - Swim Smooth: The Complete Coaching System for Swimmers and Triathletes

Due to my Triathlon enthusiasm in past year, I've got into swimming also. As to my nature, I have to get to know the technical jargon about swimming, that I would be able to learn to swim smoothly. For that purpose I found a perfect book, 300 pages about freestyle swimming - Swim Smooth: The Complete Coaching System for Swimmers and Triathletes.

Swim Smooth is book by Paul Newsome and Adam Young, both have a long background on swimming, but even more background on coaching swimming. They have a Swim Smooth named swimming training center in Australia and very useful web page also about swimming.

I must admit, that I thought there can't be written 300 pages about freestyle swimming so, that every page would make sense, but I was so wrong. Book is filled with good information, training tips, technique and useful pictures explaining all the things in detail. When reaching to the end of the book, I even thought it fell bit short.

Book starts from the basics of swimming and explains every part of swimming in great detail. For training purposes, book introduces 6 different swimmer types and give tips on improving swimming to all of those. It also says that there is no one best way to swim, it's always about the body and personal preferences.

If you are on to improving your freestyle swimming or into triathlon, this is a must read book. It stops the speculation on what is good and what is not for swimming and gives statistics and technique advices to all aspects of swimming. It has even its own section to open water swimming.

Only minus I have to give the book is that it became expensive to me. I have ordered swimming training equipment with about 100 euros only due to this book. I believe those will pay back to me on better swimming training sessions and eventually as a better swimmer in next triathlon races.

For freestyle swimming, this book is my bible now. I'm not going to look for any other book or training sites for a long time.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Price of the coding - is it a nationality issue?

Couple of weeks ago Finnish magazine 3T got their hands on secret internal report from an large Finnish company about efficiency of coders in different countries. Report stated that even though Indian coders cost approximately 30% of what Finnish coders do, Finnish ones are 4,5 times more efficient than their Indian counterparts. This then means that Indian coders turn to be 35% more costly than Finns eventually. (Source: (in Finnish) 3T - Salainen selvitys: Intialainen koodaus on suomalaista kalliimpaa).

I've worked with at least, Finnish, Indian, Chinese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Slovakian, British, French, Mexican, US and Canadian coders and I have to say nationality doesn't make a difference. Despite the nationality there are really efficient coders and coders who just can't make it happen. There are noticeable national differences on work methods, but those don't explain the efficiency.

Trend in buying coding from some specific country drives to the situation, that there are too much demand for the knowledgeable resources. In these countries some less capable people do get hired and easily sold to high demand customers in countries where coding prices are high. This might make it look like coders in some countries are less capable than in others.

In countries where price of coding is higher, only the efficient ones get to keep their jobs. When the competition is fierce, less capable ones turn to do something else than coding (I bet many of you think managing of the coding now).

I like to believe that, in most of the cases price of the coder is irrelevant. Good coder can easily be 100 times more efficient than some other. I don't mean they make code 100 faster than others, but they can make much more clear code and create much less errors than others. So the overall result might be 100 times less work was done for some piece of software.

Also a good team can make a difference. Team with good internal ways of working, like code conventions, code review practices, architectural guidelines and open discussions will improve efficiency dramatically. These in their own sense make evaluation of SW project length a challenge. It's the team and following their efficiency that make it possible to estimate what's the cost and time of certain SW project.

There are noticeable differences in efficiency of certain coders and team of coders. I don't believe it's a nationality issue, it's always about how competent the individual and the team is. It doesn't make buying of SW development easy. What it should state to the buyers though, is that price is small function in SW development efficiency. There always need to be other measurements in use, to know the real price of the coder and the team.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Marketing on it's best - Zenrobotics

Zenrobotics is a Finnish company, who have invented really important product. They've made a robot that can identify and collect different materials from trash and this way improve recycling a lot. Their product is cool and meaningfull, but what I love the most, is their marketing videos.

This is a perfect example of an extremely enjoyable marketing video, where still the product plays a key part. There's many entertaining product videos and adverts out there, but too often the actual product doesn't really play a part on it. In this one, the robot plays a key part.

Check the video out:


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen