Personally, the public be damned. I study Objectivism for my own self. Every day is Randsday as far as I'm concerned.

Heathkits were really great. Heathkits were these products that you would buy in kit form. You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product if it was available. These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You'd actually build this thing yourself. I would say that this gave one several things. It gave one a understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked because it would include a theory of operation but maybe even more importantly it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean you looked at a television set you would think that "I haven't built one of those but I could. There's one of those in the Heathkit catalog and I've built two other Heathkits so I could build that." Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation not these magical things that just appeared in one's environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.

I used to do little electronic kits when I was a kid—we couldn't afford Heathkits—and I, too, think they had a profound influence. Not only do you realize that there's no magic in everyday things, you discover that they're actually far more amazing.

I think about this every day. I drive to work in a vehicle comprised of thousands and thousands of parts from all over the world, designed by a company in England; assembled in a factory in Germany; powered by decomposed dinosaurs dug up in the Middle East and turned into fuel by Texans; and listening to songs selected randomly from a library of thousands on a device that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the most powerful computers of my childhood. And all I had to do was go to a couple of stores and plunk down some money, an amount that I considered very reasonable.

I mean, who needs fantasy or science fiction? Harry Potter's wand doesn't hold a candle to the productive wonder of global capitalism and the power of the human mind.

The other reason why this hit home for me is that I have kids and I want to impart this sense of wonder to them. It reminded me of Richard Feynman's father. We watch How It's Made and MythBusters and I patiently answer their "why" questions no matter how trivial. I am careful not to overwhelm them or impose my interests on them; I realize that this parenting thing is a marathon and I'll get to everything I know and love eventually.

Now if only someone had done the same for E.G. Ross' The Objective American. That was an exceptional daily essay on wide-ranging topics written in the 90s that did not outlive its creator.

Furthermore, I'm a programmer and manager by trade. Much of programming and management is routine. The beginning of most work is fascinating: you design a system, lay the groundwork, and build something from nothing. But execution tends to be repetitive and detail-oriented. Once the program is out in the wild, maintenance and expansion are very rarely sexy or exciting.

The ability to keep at a task day after day, month after month, year after year is invaluable. It is often what makes the difference between a decent performer and an excellent one. But if your entire childhood is spent flitting about—leaving when the going gets tough—then you're likely going to continue that pattern as an adult and money will only go so far at motivating you to do the menial work. This will manifest itself as being a prima donna, changing jobs frequently, or general dissatisfaction with work.

One response to my entry attacked something that I never said: that the goal of education was boredom and "getting along with peers." While I did not elaborate the point sufficiently, I did say that tedium was not the purpose of education. Clearly, the purpose of education is to give a child the knowledge necessary for being an employed adult. (Making good choices and learning to be happy are more the purpose of parenting.) But that doesn't mean knowledge is the only thing you can get from it.

Off the top of my head, here are some useful skills that you get alongside an education:

• Taking direction from a variety of superiors
• Dealing with irrational people
• Managing one's time and priorities
• Doing tasks that one doesn't particularly enjoy
• Collaborating with others to get tasks done
• Learning to stand up for oneself
• Dealing with objective evaluation
• Dealing with people who don't like you
• Doing repetitive practice tasks to acquire mastery
• Balancing extracurricular activities with school work

Few of those can be acquired from homeschooling. They are all part and parcel of being an adult employee in a modern workplace. It's best to develop them in a relatively risk-fre setting like school—working on them on the job can easily result in a job loss as one makes missteps. Again, these are not the primary aims of school but their acquisition is vital to adult success.

For me, it's like programming. You write a program using frameworks and libraries. When you're done, you run it and everything seems fine. And maybe it continues to run well until it hits an unusual condition, what we in the business call an "edge case." How you respond to this situation is telling.

Some people, typically amateurs or novices, will immediately jump to the conclusion that there is a bug in the framework or libraries on which their program is built. It's a very tempting leap because then they don't have to confront their own fallibility or lack of forethought.

More seasoned programmers will assume that they've made a mistake somewhere along the line and dig into their code to find it. They know that the underlying libraries and frameworks are widely used, deeply tested, and most of the bugs have been found. They don't assume an infallibility on the part of the framework developers—they just recognize that those creators are more skilled than themselves and less likely to have made a seemingly-obvious mistake.

Sometimes, after all is said and done, there is a bug in the library or framework. But you don't know that until you've actually put forth the effort to rule out your own mistakes and to create test cases to demonstrate the problem. In other words, you don't know that there's a deeper problem until you actually know that there's an issue. You may have been right when you made the initial surmise, but it was baseless until you did the work.

That's kind of how I view Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff. Every time I've ever come across something with which I disagreed, I pored over my thinking on the matter and really dove deep into their reasoning. I assumed that I had made a mistake because, well, they're experts and had done an order of magnitude more thinking on the subject than I had. Blindly accepting their position and capriciously rejecting it are two sides of the same coin: shortcuts of thinking.

If after all of my delving I decided that they had made the error, then I'll formulate my reasons (e.g., on the 2004 election) and decide how essential the disagreement. In every case, we've appeared to disagree over strategy rather than anything fundamental. Presumably, I would reject Peikoff or Rand if I thought their conclusion, reasoning, or premises were unsound or at war with reality. So far, I haven't come across anything along those lines and it's certainly not for lack of exposure.

To put this in terms of Joyce's essay, the "Subjectivist Objectivist" wants his program to be treated as part of the underlying framework or library even though he isn't one of the maintainers and isn't willing to publicly fork the project. When anyone calls him on that, he gets defensive and attacks the whistleblower. Other "Subjectivist Objectivists" rally to the task because there's safety in numbers and their worldview is similarly in peril.

What's most interesting to me is that nearly everyone who fits the characterization of "Subjectivist Objectivist" is a former Kelleyite. I think that's important but I'm still mulling over the implications.

[UPDATE (2/2/2012): Revised a sentence in the third paragraph that was very poorly worded. Thanks for letting me know, Mark!]]]> http://bbrown.info/2012/01/sometimes-authority-is-authoritative.html http://bbrown.info/2012/01/sometimes-authority-is-authoritative.html Objectivism Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:53:42 -0700 School can be boring.

Let me put the emphasis where I mean it: school can be boring. So can work. So can life.

I'm not going to say that the purpose of school is to be tedious. But learning and mastery aren't supposed to be effortless. You have to learn things that maybe you don't want to because they're a) foundational and b) important. For a child, it'd be great to stick only to what interests you and skip the math drills. And it's tempting to think that a child-centered education might result in more engagement and thus more learning.

But that's not how life works. You can't only work on the fun projects at your office; someone needs to wipe out the toilets; and there's always paperwork to be filed. There's going to be a boss and he's going to tell you to do things. If you cut and run because man that guy's always droning on about the proper sequence to assemble the widget, then you're not going to be employed for long.

Knowing how to handle being bored and follow directions is a life skill. Finding the value in relationships with people unlike yourself (or maybe even beneath your level of intelligence) will serve you for the rest of your life. School is a great place to acquire and practice those skills. If you indulge your child's self-absorption, you're not doing him any favors and disappointment is going to be a theme throughout his life.

The theme was USA and it was held at Chase Field, where the Arizona Diamondbacks play. The grounds were literally the USA, with different sections themed to different parts of America. In the middle was an enormous Statue of Liberty with hot dog carts around it and an incredible selection of desserts. Around the edges were the following:

• Hollywood: a huge backdrop of the Hollywood Hills, two huge Oscar statues with the Go Daddy Guy's head instead, a star walk with Go Daddy Girls names in front of a movie theater façade, fake paparazzi snapping photos as you walked down it, culminating in a Chinatown shop where you could get vegetable lo mein or chicken and broccoli in a Chinese takeout box
• New Orleans: a façade with a sidewalk lead to a restaurant front with jambalaya and shrimp po boys and a "Cafe du Go Daddy" serving beignets, an enormous Mardi Gras float with attendants throwing beads
• Stage: Big Swing and the Ballroom Blasters sung the national anthem (followed by the release of a bald eagle who flew around the stadium) and several classic covers, Dierks Bentley, Trace Adkins, Kid Rock
• Mount Rushmore: a "sand" sculpture with the heads of the Go Daddy Girls instead of the presidents, Bob Parsons' custom motorcycle collection
• Las Vegas: casino tables, all-you-can-eat buffet, a Dance Heads booth
• Hawaii: surfing simulator, tiki hut serving tilapia tacos and ribs, enormous Go Daddy sand castle
• San Francisco: Alcatraz prison with two cells for picture taking, a cafeteria line serving turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn on prison trays, an enormous Golden Gate Bridge re-christened the Go Daddy Gate Bridge, a huge Buddha sculpture in a Thai setting serving the Chinese food from Hollywood, photo shoot set up with props
• Indianapolis: Danica Patrick's Indy car and Nascar stock car, remote control race track with eight stations controlling miniature versions of Danica's stock car, a pit simulator for quick changing of tires

During the intermissions between the incredible acts, Bob Parsons would give out money assisted by the Go Daddy Girls. In a welcome change this year, the whole process was significantly more automated. The Go Daddy Girl would press an big red button and a name would randomly appear for Bob to read out and it would also show up on the Jumbotron. He gave out over $1.1 million in prizes in $500, $1000, $2500, $5000, and $10,000 increments with the taxes fully paid.

My bosses' boss Neil and I were talking about how great it is to work for a company that had to build a machine to make cash gift distribution more efficient. "We couldn't give the money out fast enough," said he. "So we built something to make it quicker." It was perhaps the most surreal moment when you stopped to think about it.

In sheer scope and diversity, this party easily topped last year's. Two years ago, they filled the stadium with falling snow. Last year, it was an enormous Ferris wheel in the middle of the stadium. This year, there was a bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, the bridge replica, the sand sculptures, and three huge entertainment acts. It was a tremendous party and I'm so proud to be a part of Go Daddy!

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of GoDaddy.com, Inc.]

The key to success is focus and persistence. In life, you won't achieve anything unless you've defined what you want and then work at it. It's the same in business—perhaps even more so. While an individual can dawdle about in a fog and still get enough to eke out an existence, a business that acted like that would fail much more quickly. The marketplace does not reward complacency or mediocrity, not when there is competition or profit to be had.

I look at Google and see them inexplicably trying to copy Microsoft. Microsoft has two cash cows—Office and Windows—but is desperately paranoid that they're running out of milk. So it does exploratory ventures into console gaming, Internet search, cloud computing, smartphones, tablets, health care, and so on. Similarly, Google has two cash cows—search and advertising—but is easily distracted by sexy, new possibilities. The new shiny for them has included mapping, email, social networking, health care, power metering, bookmarking, photo albums, blogging, browsers, smart phones, video, 3D modeling, telephony, and so much more. Interestingly, both companies have entered these new territories primarily through acquisition.

It's important to note that these two companies are wildly successful and I am a fan and happy consumer of many of the technologies I label as distractions. It's entirely possible that all of these side businesses will turn out to be useful hedges against eventual losses in the core business.

But maybe they'd be more successful if they put all that effort into the core businesses and did their expansion in an aligned fashion. For example, Microsoft has an associated enterprise server business that takes advantage of their Windows operating system work. Google's foray into smartphones provides another vehicle for their advertising business. But even the longest of the long views can't explain space elevators.

It's fashionable to talk about Apple at this point. They are renowned for their focus, cutting products to keep things easy to understand. Further, you can see a progression from the iPod to the iPad and the latter as the fulfilled vision of the former. It takes tremendous dedication to keep plugging away to realize that vision. Along the way, Apple has expanded into adjacent territories and built them into decent side businesses that reinforce the core line. iTunes, the App Store, and iCloud make iPods, iPhones, and Macintoshes more valuable and desirable.

I've heard this business model described as the "stadium" model. You get people into the ballpark and then you provide all the concessions so they don't have to leave to get their needs satisfied. This strikes me as a great way to maintain focus yet still have ample room for growth.

In the midst of a widespread recession, North Dakota is booming. The oil industry is leading the way with ripples in air traffic, rail traffic, lodging, and even higher education. It's attracting industry and the industrious just like Colorado did in the fictional work.

In the book, what did Colorado desperately need? Reliable rail transportation. The government and its crony capitalist collaborators fought tooth and nail against the heroes of the story, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, as they tried to supply it to the state.

And in real life, we have the spectacle of Obama "delaying" the start of the Keystone XL pipeline. Aside from linking the booming shale oil industry in Canada with the Texas refineries, it was also going to be a vital transportation vehicle for the Bakken Formation.

I'm more than a little worried to see what else might come to pass from Atlas.

On the other hand, damn! Can you imagine working in a cushy environment like that? It seems like you'd get so soft because of the coddling and you'd really have to work to avoid feeling entitled. It seems that Aaron Swartz may have been on to something with his critique of life at Google. It certainly appears that Larry Page might have second thoughts.

Personally, I like the work. All the music studios, dog parks, gyms, and such seem like distractions from work. Don't get me wrong: you definitely should take breaks but a walk would suffice. Moreover, free food and all the rest cost a lot of money. It doesn't come out of salaries or capital expenditures, seemingly, but it's got to come from somewhere. My guess is that Google's generating cash out the wazoo and the cost of perks is not yet registering on shareholders' radars.

The effects of this sort of coddling poses a real threat both to Google and the employee. When there comes a time to reduce the perks—and that seems inevitable—the business risks alienating employees who have come to expect the perks. For the employee, he or she will have a difficult time at the next company if they can even find one comparable in pay. Personally, I say no thanks. I'll take my generous pay, excellent benefits, flexible schedule, and reasonable perks any day.

Far too much development is anticipatory, with overengineering the usual result. Faced with huge, complicated code bases (or the prospect of them when commencing a new project) it is tempting to order TDD as a check against that temptation. In my experience, though, the overengineering mindset does not go away under TDD—it just transforms into a zealotry towards code coverage.

And that is my biggest gripe with TDD: creating unit tests feels like development and looks like development but it isn't development. It is very easy to get into the business of producing unit tests rather than releasing product. (I say this as someone who presented a class on unit testing at a company conference in 2008. I did a pragmatic style of TDD for approximately 2 years around that presentation.)

Assuming then that you can rein in that tendency to strive for 100% code coverage, the next biggest problem with TDD is that the biggest part of an application lives on the client—mostly outside the reach of the xUnit systems. Obviously there are ways to attack client-side unit testing but they are all inherently brittle due to cross-browser issues and sometimes frequent changes to user interfaces. As Web applications become increasingly client-based, more and more development is outside the scope of TDD. (Or within scope but at considerable cost and effort.)

I have become disenchanted with TDD and its ilk over the years for these reasons. In my opinion, the best way to improve quality is to build time for developer testing into the estimates and hold developers accountable for quality product. Emphasizing cross-browser and functional testing at the developer level before a handoff to QA has resulted in better quality in my experience than a doctrinaire emphasis on unit testing and code coverage. (Accountability is another subject entirely and I have a lot of thoughts surrounding that as well, which I'll share someday. Read Codermetrics by Jonathan Alexander for more along those lines.)

I have resisted doing this for years and years and years. I've long thought that going Linux just meant that you're doomed to perennial tweaking and figuring out incompatible drivers. I don't give a rip about either of the "free as in's" when it comes to operating systems—I'm an unabashed Mac user, I pay for all of my software, and my programmatic life is completely Windows-based.

So why am I doing this? And why now?

Python.

I have been reading some really intriguing books on data analysis, social networking, and monitoring and all of the examples are in Python. I've always been tempted by Python the language and Python the community, and I've even made minor forays into that world. I know that Mac OS X is a great platform for Python but I have zero familiarity with Linux.

In the end, if I make anything significant, I'm going to want to host it on Linux so why not start now. With a virtual machine, I can duplicate my final environment without polluting my Mac or worrying about the differences between the two. I initially looked at Ubuntu but I think it's really more of a consumer-grade distro whereas I want raw server.

A colleague at work said that he uses CentOS; I figured that's as good as any and he certainly knows more than I do. So I downloaded CentOS 6.0 minimal and I'll see how it goes.

The downside was (and still is) that it runs on Perl. I'm not a PHP developer by any stretch, but I can fend for myself in WordPress when I have a task in mind. Perl, though, is just inscrutable to me; I don't have time to learn it and what little I have read doesn't make sense.

So why stick with it, especially in light of the recent malware attack? I briefly toyed with Textpattern last night but the thought of redoing my blog, site, and essays in yet another CMS left me stone cold. I've been down this road before and I just don't have time for it any more.

I've got so many other better things than to endlessly tweak my Web site. Perhaps I've matured in that regard. Or maybe part of maturity and wisdom is a jaded fatigue with youth's flitting.