Coming Clean

The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam

Clips from the intro to the intro

“The truth shall make you free” (John viii, 32).

What is Catholicism? By that question we do not merely ask what is that characteristic quality which distinguishes Catholicism from other forms of Christianity; we go deeper than that, and seek to discover what is its governing idea and what are the forces set in motion by this idea. We ask what is the single basic thought, what is the essential form that gives life to the great structure which we call Catholicism? Regarded from the outside Catholicism has the appearance of a confused mass of conflicting forces, of an unnatural synthesis, of a mixture of foreign, nay contradictory, elements. And for that reason there have been those who have called it a complex of opposites.

…

We Catholics do not quarrel with the methods of the religious historian, so long as he keeps within his proper limits, within the limits of historical data and proved historical fact, and so long as he does not claim in his classification of religious types to pass decisive judgment upon the essential nature of the religious structure which he has under examination. We Catholics acknowledge readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn. There is no mechanical identity, but an organic identity. And we go further and say that thousands of years hence Catholicism will probably be even richer, more luxuriant, more manifold in dogma, morals, law and worship than the Catholicism of the present day. … It is quite true, Catholicism is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictories. Wherever there is life, there you must have conflict and contrary. Even in purely biblical Christianity, and especially in Old Testament religion, these conflicts and contraries may be observed. For only so is there growth and the continual emergence of new forms. The Gospel of Christ would have been no living gospel, and the seed which He scattered no living seed, if it had remained ever the tiny seed of A.D. 33, and had not struck root, and had not assimilated foreign matter, and had not by the help of this foreign matter grown up into a tree, so that the birds of the air dwell in its branches. … But we refuse to see in these elements thus enumerated the essence of Catholicism, or even to grant that they are “structural elements of Catholicism” in the sense that Catholicism did not achieve historical importance save through them. For the Catholic is intimately conscious that Catholicism is ever the same, yesterday and to-day, that its essential nature was already present and manifest when it began its journey through the world, that Christ Himself breathed into it the breath of life, and that He Himself at the same time gave the young organism those germinal aptitudes which have unfolded themselves in the course of the centuries in regular adaptation to the needs and requirements of its environment. Catholicism recognizes in itself no element that is inwardly foreign to it, that is not itself, that does not derive from its original nature.

… is yet another scripting language.

Why?!

Mostly because that’s what my boss says.

So, what’s going to be cool about this new language? Honestly, I’m not sure – but this is what we’re shooting for:
- extensible syntax
- extensible graphical editor (so people won’t have to be mindful of syntax)
- extensible run-time (to support extensible syntax)

This is most definitely going to be a niche thing. It’s geared to get non-programmers programming the basic flow control and information design that they are already responsible for on a daily basis. I work for a call service after all – this is what they do.

One nice carrot on this thing is that after deployment and 6 months to a year of solid running, I can release it open source.


interface Foo
{
}
interface Bar : Foo /* Bar is a Foo */
{
}
interface A
{
Foo getFoo();
}
interface B : A /* B is an A */
{
Bar getFoo(); /* C# thinks this is a bad thing */
}


This is a layman’s understanding and frustration of what’s going on in the world. Maybe I’m off in my perception of things – feel free to correct me.

So, lately, all we’ve been hearing about is stimulus and bailouts and huge sums of cash. What no one seems to be taking seriously in these discussions is where the huge sums of cash are coming from. Technically, all these big organizations, and our government on top of that, are broke. So where’s the money coming from? We know there aren’t stockpiles of cash lying around that is being drawn from. So where?

In one sense, it’s coming from nowhere. In a more real sense, it is being stolen from our pockets. The Treasury department is being ordered to print new cash. Printing new cash can be a good thing, but in this case, it’s bad and immoral. All those hard earned dollars that you have saved away? Yeah, it’s becoming worth less and less. More on why that’s immoral later.

The pieces of paper we call cash symbolize a backing physical precious commodity held in trust by the government – for example, there’s a bit of gold lying around that is equitable to your dollar.

So why is printing more cash bad? Well, first, when can printing cash be good? Printing cash can be good in two instances that I can think of: (1) the government has an increase in its backing stores of precious commodity or (2) the government is trying to keep the value of its cash equitable with other places in the world that are experiencing a decline in the backing value of their cash. In this latter instance, you are devaluing your cash but for the benefit of maintaining equitable currency exchange between foreign markets. To be honest, I don’t know how useful (2) really would be and if it ever has come into play. There’s also a 3rd option – you print cash to replace cash. So you print cash, hold it in reserve, wait to reclaim cash to destroy (’cause it worn out, damaged, whatever), and release an equitable amount of cash that was held in reserve.

So those are the three instances where I think printing cash can be good. There may be others.

When is printing cash bad? In the second good instance mentioned above, I noted that the printing of cash will decrease the value of cash if there’s not an increase in the backing stores of commodity. So for example, you have a dollar bill, and its backing is a chunk of gold. The government comes along and prints some cash, and now that chunk of gold is backing two dollars. So now your original dollar is worth half of its original chunk. If the government gives you your second dollar – great! You’re breaking even. But what happens when the government gives that dollar to someone else? Well, the short version is, you’ve been robbed. And that’s exactly what’s going on today.

And thus here we are in our present situation. Our banks are failing. Economic backbones such as the auto industry are failing. And the government is printing cash (thus devaluing all of our present currency) to bail everyone and their dead great great grandfather out of debt. Does anyone else see the problem there? Debtors owe creditors money. The government is printing new money, giving it the debtors, and letting them pay off their creditors. In some sense, what debt there is should be increasing by the printing of money (i.e. devaluation caused by printing should make the value of debts owed increase), but either way, the value of your money is being decreased so that the difference can be given to someone else that has squandered the money they had away.

It’s kinda like the prodigal son, upon realizing that he’s broke and all manner of screwed up, sending a letter to his father asking for more money (“Dad, need more money”), and the father sending the prodigal son money obtained from the wealth of the responsible son. Note in this version, the prodigal son did not change his ways or return home. If you don’t think that’s occurring right now in our economy between wayward banks, institutions, and irresponsible private citizens (the prodigal son) and our government (the father) and the rest of us (the responsible son), wake up.

Let the banks fail. Let people go bankrupt. You can’t spend your way out of debt. You have to save your way out of debt. And while that may seem like a lot of inaction, it’s actually a very different form of action than what has been exercised for the past 17 years. The current form of action being proposed by Obama and his administration is just a continuation of what got us here in the first place. Obama’s not turning the country away from the cliff, he’s hitting the accelerator. The short term will make people feel good, but the long term just cannot sustain itself.

Somehow or another I have landed myself on a committee to define requirements and select a tool for capturing process metrics. Even though the email was all spiffy inviting me to participate, I knew there was a background watermark of “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”. I should have given heed to the sign.

So now here I am, in a group of process and metrics weenies. As far as I can tell, I’m the lone real software engineer – though I think there is a person or two from a software background or who has dabbled as part of a software team (they give me some amount of sympathy).

I’m somewhat ambivalent to the whole thing, and I know it shows. But it’s not that I’m not interested – it’s just that I’m not interested in how they want to proceed. When I start saying things like “If you want to capture metrics, then give engineers a tool that politely and humanely lets them go through the process like engineers who are actually doing their job, and then glean/scrape your metrics out of that,” I get a lot of forlorn and exasperated looks. The unspoken response is: “Sure, that’d be great … but there’s nothing like that out there, and we’re talking about a lot more than just code reviews here.” And, of course, the underlying truth of it all is that this isn’t about process or process improvement – this an exercise of CYA vis-a-vis metrics collection.

And the whole “this isn’t just for code reviews” is really what makes all of this the most intolerable for me. We’re gathering metrics for defects found in different artifacts at different project phases. So, while something like Review Board would be abso-frickin-lutely awesome for me … it’s inappropriate (at least in the minds of the powers that be of this group) for the breadth of scope of this committee’s task. Suggesting that we use the right tool for the right project phase is probably going to be lost on them: “But, we’re collecting the same kind of data regardless of the phase!!” … nevermind that the process of which the data is generated differs between phases.

I need to refine my issue with that last bit there – that’s where I’m continually dismissed in this little piece of non-fun-ness I’m involved in. Any thoughts on the issue would be appreciated

In the world of one who chooses to live by Prelactarianism (scan to the end), there are personal vices and pit-falls that can lead one’s life into certain compromises and lesser states of being.

Today, I was reminded of mine: hot coffee. I mean like: too friggin’ hot to drink hot coffee. This is how I like my coffee – initially anyway. I sip until I can pull a full mouthful in, and then I drink deeply, filling my belly with hot creamy coffee goodness.

So, why is hot coffee a vice in the world of a Prelactarianist?

Because cream curdles if the coffee is too hot. :’(

This week was a good week, and I was expecting it to go bad.

I’ve been in the role of software lead engineer for about 6 months now. For the first 3 months, I was leading a 4 man team, and then I was promoted to oversee a 12 man team. This was problematic because I had assumed a large chunk of the 4 man team development responsibility, and finding myself responsible for the care and feeding of 12 individuals pretty much put me behind.

The 4 man team has a software release at the end of June. The other 8 engineers had completed a release of software a month ago. So, for the past month, I’ve been desperately trying to get the 4 man team back on schedule, while making sure the other 8 guys are busy – busy with the right things, mind you.

This last week was a big week. It was the week I had earmarked as IOC – Initial Operational Capability. Basically, this was the week to go alpha. And we hadn’t begun to wed our back-end development and front-end development.

And yet, things went according to my best hopes and plans. It’s basically attributed to the fact that (A) I design API specifications which are pluggable and thus implemented separately from and in accordance to that API and (B) the developer responsible for the gui was conscious of the fact that he only had two responsibilities: (1) implement the gui per the interaction design and (2) implement the gui such that its interactions are meant to interact with my API design.

I cannot speak highly enough of the developer who worked the GUI. He’s a new hire straight out of college, and he’s easily the best college hire I have seen since I was hired. There’s a good chance he’s better than me, but only time will tell. I hope to get him some fat cash in reward for his awesome contribution.

Tuesday we did the initial wedding of GUI to implemented back-end. It was buggy, but it was working. I felt like we were still walking on that knife’s edge – things either go to plan … or not and badly not.

Today, we have a solid and consistently running implementation of all deliverable capabilities, with only a few lingering interaction details. Now, we have a month’s worth of bug finding and – I suspect – just a ton of polishing.

This has me very excited because it’s validation of everything I have said for the past 3 years. It basically took me getting into this lead position to make this happen, and it just feels awesome to say “see?? isn’t this awesome?? This is how it should happen – this is what we should be delivering.”

The doubter in me says that my lead will not see this accomplishment for what it is. And I just don’t know what I will do if he won’t give me the validation I feel I have earned.

But go team, go! It wouldn’t have happened without them. They all performed to their ability – and we found a number of folks have skills we were not yet aware of. I hope this is just a sign of things to come – designing right, implementing right, and leaving enough schedule fat to really get things tested before release.

I was in a meeting with my project manager yesterday. We don’t get along very well. We’ve become use to each other over the years, but there’s always some residual hostility in the form of not really willing to totally trust the other. He thinks I’m out to get him; whereas, I’m just out to do the right thing and am contentious when he needlessly gets in the way.

So, there we were in the meeting, discussing personnel issues for the next 6 – 9 months. We’re walking through employees, one by one, discussing strengths, weaknesses, best fits, etc. We get to one particular guy, and it turns out we have two wildly different opinions. I view the guy as bright, assertive, and straight-forward. My PM views him as quiet and demurring.

My parting thought on our different views was: “Well, it’s probably because he sees you as an authority.”
PM: “Yes, that’s probably true … and you don’t.”

Pegged. I guess it’s good he finally sees it – or at least acknowledges it. I have a twinge of guilt, but mostly I’m amused. It was good though, because the other day I was rehashing a history of his mistakes that I’m trying to plan to fix that he thinks un-needed. So, I view it as tit for tat.

… but certainly, somewhere, there’s a physicist who would say otherwise.