2006FEB121501

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This block is what we are concentrating on. Each colour is a particular module.

old notes (sticky notes) from what seems years ago when we sketched out a system.

here is russells stack.

heres my stack. trust me it means something.

update
2006JUL
Listening to ITConversations - 2005 ITC ETECH - OReilly Emerging Technology - Jason Fried - Lessons learnt building basecamp, heard the following from Jason Fried...

'... look at problems & embrace these problems.... contraints are where creativity comes from... if forced to come up with constraints you will solve them ...'

2006JUNE
Read this PG article on Power of the Marginal to get a better idea why this idea (and others like it) are used.

Power of the marginal
Over lunch discussed what needs to be done in lego. Note the old notes (sticky notes) from what seems years ago when we sketched out a system. The blue, yellow, red 4 connector stack is what we are concentrating on. Each colour is a particular module in order of importance downwards.

This photo has notes. Move your mouse over the photo to see them.

Comments

	dgray_xplane says: Bootload: Where did you learn this "lego" technique? Or did you make it up? I find it quite interesting. Posted 29 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: '... Where did you learn this "lego" technique? ...' Using cultural advantage as a tool Made up through necessity. I'm my own boss, so I can try anything. If it fails, its no real loss. I have a theory.... '... As a small startup, we are undercut & outgunned in sheer numbers by Indian companies. We can be outspent by US companies & outconnected by UK. I'm simply applying a native Australian cultural advantage - an ability to innovate with bare essentials & minimal resources. Build a hack out of fencing wire or anything out of hand. ...' If it works move on, maybe to improve at a later date. software & lego The use of lego is hardly original. If you look carefully around at googles history you see they built machines using lego & I reckon even use the lego colours for the company logo. Odd stares over lunch About 3 years ago sketching out some ideas a mate of mine (Russell) and myself, went to lunch with pens, paper, books, folders and a whole heap of lego & assigned these blocks a layer of code. Really they could have been functions, objects. We got a few odd stares, but what came out of it was a series of blocks representing a series of modules we thought could solve the problem. Visualising clickable objects The important thing is we can see clearly what is going on. From a development point of view we are really trying to developing much like those clever people at SAP (Inside the Secret Software Power). SAP & pluggable modules Assemble a whole lot of modules that can be plugged together to accomplish a task. (SAP have a grid of modules which have tight integration and can be plugged together to build a particular solution). I havent programmed in SAP but reading through the book & talking to my brother inlaw who does use SAP confirms the approach. As a side note, SAP was around many years before Microsoft and just works (though is a begger to install - this is something we have to avoid). How? Theres no real special meaning to the choice of colour, size of blocks aside from the fact we join the blocks together & see and more importantly, think how they can come together. Each block or module is uncoupled. That means it does one thing & one thing well (an old C idiom). If we want to build a foo application it may take lots of bar objects to achieve a particular task. Why? This is the advantage of using blocks. Click them together to see what you need to acheive a particular task. Its not quite UML and we may miss something. But its cheap & if used intelligently does the job. You also has the benifit of playing with lego over lunch :) For example Its a rough prototyping tool, a sketch if you like. This red block is for capturing input. It connects to a filter that filters out URL's and funnels into a the yellow DB block. More application We also applied the Lego idea. As we build the machines we spray paint each machine a different colour for different purposes. I'll add shots at a later date (when the paint dries). Posted 29 months ago. ( permalink )
	Alessandro Gentilini says: Well, I found here all the answers to my questions about your LEGO idea. I like it and I find very interesting the Australian way of innovate: the ability to innovate with bare essentials & minimal resources Posted 28 months ago. ( permalink )
	dgray_xplane says: Wow -- thanks for this excellent explanation! Posted 28 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: > very interesting the Australian way of innovate I think its inherent in resouce scarcity and not exclusively australian. The example that comes to mind is the Russian FBI Mole & suspected spy, Robert Phillip Hanssen (you could insert any resouce starved person here) Hanssen utilised the fact that disk drive travels missed a small portion of the floppy disk probably due to % errors on read/writes & modified his disk drive to move & copy data to it. Dont tell me what it should do but what is it capable of The FBI looking at the disk couldn't find any info. On closer inspection found more data beyond normal floppy drives. You can read more about it here. I think the point is if you have the time & need you can find a way Posted 28 months ago. ( permalink )
	derek_ says: Brilliant! Thanks for the idea! Posted 28 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: Read this PG article on Power of the Marginal to get a better idea why this idea (and others like it) are used. '... Another advantage of being an outsider is you have lots of time. Successful people often answer, to the question on what’s wrong with their life, that they don’t have enough time. ...' '... outsiders are compelled to make things that are cheap, because they have very limited resources... The insiders can’t make it as cheap or as small as the outsiders, they have to work on big projects, which will, by their sheer size, impress people. Small things are magical, Graham says, because they can be done fast and seem perfect, and working on small things is a good way to learn. [0] Reference [0] Fingerprints of Casper Fabricius, 'Paul Graham: Power of the marginal' casperfabricius.com/blog/2006/06/24/railsconf -paul-graham/ [Accessed Monday, 26 June 2006] Posted 27 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: update 2006JUN Power of the marginal Read this PG article on Power of the Marginal to get a better idea why this idea (and others like it) are used. Posted 26 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: update 2006JUL Embracing constraints Listening to ITConversations - 2005 ITC ETECH - OReilly Emerging Technology - Jason Fried - Lessons learnt building basecamp, heard the following from Jason Fried... '... look at problems & embrace these problems .... contraints are where creativity comes from... if forced to come up with constraints you will solve them ...' The talk goes into detail why embracing constraints you can find a creative solution, cheaper. Some more (paraphrased) comments ... Embrace constraints look for constraints because creativity & simple solutiuons follow. *avoid the following -we dont people, hire more. -we dont have enought hardware, -buy some more hardware, -dont have enough software, buy some more software Instead use the people you have, use the hardware & software you have & find a way to do it. Posted 26 months ago. ( permalink )
	Alessandro Gentilini says: It's one of my fave because... it' really a smart idea Posted 18 months ago. ( permalink )
	bootload says: '... it' really a smart idea ...' I'm still thinking I havent written up your cheese cake recipe :( Posted 18 months ago. ( permalink )
	Alessandro Gentilini says: Don't worry :-) I can wait thank you, Alessandro Posted 18 months ago. ( permalink )