My first request for number porting from the Proximus mobile business acount of my former employer to Mobile Vikings dates from 6th of June. A few dozen emails, several phone calls and one complaint to the Telecom Mediator later, I had my phone number ported to MobileVikings today, July 29.
Был я сегодня на бизнес-тусовке в одной из брюссельских дискотек, взял бутылочку пива, послушал презентации бельгийских веб-стартапов. Все идеи вторичные. Сами посмотрите:
Я не удержался, задал каверзный вопрос Babelway, получил удовольствие, хотя ответ был далёк от совершенства. Потом завязал серьёзный разговор с неким бизнесменом, который одновременно активист партии ProBruxsel. Миллиона на три разговор, между прочим, за мной средних размеров компания, готовая эти миллионы успешно освоить. И тут он мне заявляет, что у меня изо рта плохо пахнет. Я разговор быстро свернул, но задумался:
Here is a fictitious story of a business client that orders software for a mobile phone to an embedded developer.
Take such a trivial feature of a mobile phone as a the possibility to store last calls. What do you know about it besides that it allows to view last incoming and outgoing calls? This is the level of knowledge that a typical client has and he will express it as a requirement the same way:
— I want that my mobile phone software to store last incoming and outgoing calls.
The developer has two choices: either assault the client with question based on unconfirmed assumptions or tacitly do exactly what was asked. He writes code that keeps two lists ordered by the call time, one list for incoming calls, another one — for outgoing calls.
Soon after, the client finds out that a competing company uses a different design and demands the software to display:
Unfortunately, the previous code has already been written and is linked tightly to the UI code and to the rest of the mobile phone's OS.
So, instead of scapping the previous design and starting from scratch, the developer is now bound to implement new data structures that consists of one new list that combines incoming and outgoing calls in the right order to satisfy the first additional requirement, and three more lists for each of the 2nd, 3rd and 5th additional requirements.
This seems like nothing, but coupled to the synchronization code and error handling code, the result is likely to look cryptic for everyone, including its own developer.
