James's Weblog

Yesterday I wrote about why output parameters should be carefully documented. If an error occurs, the output values should be documented as:

• being left in an undefined state
• being set to a known, bogus value (e.g. NULL, 0, −1, 0xFFFFFFFF, …)
• being left untouched

Which should you use?

Undefined state. Specifying that the output value is in undefined is certainly the easiest, laziest approach. It requires no additional effort for the function author, and if callers make assumptions about the output state, they take all the blame. Unfortunately, the lazy approach encourages future laziness. Especially if the function allocates resources, it becomes all too easy for a sloppy maintenance programmer to add an early exit-point and to create a resource leak.

Specifying that the output value be in a defined state can make a maintenance programmer more mindful. The function contract is not solely to benefit programmers writing callers; it also acts as a guide to anyone modifying the callee.

So if the output value is put in a defined state, what should that state be?

(more…)

People writing C code often write functions that look like:

/** foo -- Some function.
  *
  * PARAMETERS:
  *   someInput       : Some input value.
  *   OUT someOutputP : Set to some output value.
  *
  * RETURNS:
  *   Some error code.
  */
err_t foo(int someInput, data_t* someOutputP)
{
    err_t err = ERR_NONE;
    /* ... Code goes here ... */
    return err;
}

This isn’t good enough. Callers have no idea what to expect if an error occurs. Is someOutputP:

• in some totally undefined state?
• set to a known, bogus value?
• left untouched?

This is particularly important if the function allocates some resources in someOutputP and the caller needs to clean it up.

Whichever method you choose, you should choose one and document it. It needs to be part of the function’s contract. If left undocumented, callers can make assumptions about what state someOutputP is in, which is dangerous.

Worse, if you don’t specify the behavior, someone who modifies the code later might not know what the behavior is supposed to be and is likely to screw it up.

Better:

/** foo -- Some function.
  *
  * PARAMETERS:
  *   someInput       : Some input value.
  *   OUT someOutputP : On success, set to some output value.
  *                     On error, left untouched.
  *
  * RETURNS:
  *   Some error code.
  */
err_t foo(int someInput, data_t* someOutputP)
{
    err_t err = ERR_NONE;
    /* ... Code goes here ... */
    return err;
}

I’ll write my thoughts about the three behaviors later.

Well, I’ve been at VMware for four months now. Things seem to be going okay. I easily am the stupidest person there, but I’ve heard that it’s better than being the smartest person. I’m still a bit stressed with deadline pressure, and I continually worry that I’m more of a liability than an asset, but I like it there.

Definitely much better than my last job.

Sony announced yesterday that they will not release any new CLIÉ handhelds in the U.S. this year:

Sony has divulged that they will not be releasing any new Clie Handhelds products in the coming fall. Sony will be suspending new Clie product development for the US while they reassess the direction of the conventional PDA market.

Sony has issued a press statement in which they announce they are going to reassess the direction of the conventional PDA market and will not introduce any new Clie handheld models in the us this fall.

While certainly significant, I think most web sites have blown this out of proportion a bit:

• It’s only for the U.S.. I expect that Sony will continue releasing new models in Japan.
• It’s only for this year. Palm OS 6/Cobalt will be out late this year, which will be a good time for Sony to get back on the saddle.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the news; Sony’s poor sense of direction was one of the many reasons why I quit. The writing had been on the wall for a long time, but Sony was too busy not listening to customers to read it.

It’s a good idea for Sony to re-evaluate their PDA plans, to do some soul-searching, and to find themselves. They can’t even figure out what the “CLIÉ” acronym stands for. Originally it meant “Communication, Link, Information, Entertainment.” After a year or two, I guess the Sony heads realized that it made no sense (especially considering that the CLIÉ line had no wireless communication abilities, had few accessories to connect to, and for the most part wasn’t very entertaining), so they changed it to the even more enigmatic “Creativity, Lifestyle, Innovation, Emotion” (or “Create Lifestyle with Innovation and Emotion”, depending on whom you ask). “What happened to the ‘Entertainment’ part?” we wondered, since that was the only part that (should have) made sense. Furthermore, all of the model numbers are prefixed with “PEG–“, which somehow stands for “Personal Entertainment Organizer.” Maybe it’s comprehensible in Japanese.

How did Sony manage to get itself lost like this?

Bad drivers. I’ve already complained about the management and its inability to ask for directions.

Poor steering. What do you expect from a huge, 18-wheeled corporation? The CLIÉ handheld line is stuck; Sony can’t whole-heartedly pursue its original goal for mobile entertainment without intruding into the markets of its PSP and iPod-wanna-be products. Sony can’t whole-heartedly pursue the smartphone market either—one of the last bastions of hope for PDAs—because Sony-Ericsson already is entrenched in the cellphone space. Instead, CLIÉ models are shoehorned into hybrid entertainment/network-communicator/PDA roles. In many respects, they’re good PDAs, but they’re lackluster as music players, gaming devices, and digital cameras. They can’t excel in any single area without competing against other Sony divisions, so they’re instead doomed to well-rounded mediocrity.

Two weeks of arguing with Verizon over their early termination fee hasn’t gotten me anywhere. They refuse to waive it.

“It follows the terms of your contract, so it’s a valid charge,” they say.

“I’m not saying it’s not valid; I’m saying it’s not right. So you’d rather have $175 from me now than have me ever do business with you again? You are aware I’ve paid Verizon over $800 during the past two years and used barely any of my minutes, right?”

“It’s a valid charge.”

It seems that more and more people these days are drones who can’t think for themselves and who are unwilling to stick their necks out.

Verizon did indicate, however, that I could get the fee waived if I reactivated my old account for the remaining duration of my contract with no additional commitment. The catch? To reactivate my old account, they’d need to use my original cell phone number, which I already had ported to Sprint. Of course, it’d be too easy if they just let me pay them directly for my remaining two weeks, as I had offered originally. No, their highly advanced computer system required an active account with the original number.

I relented and decided to play their stupid game. Not wanting to get an early termination fee on my Sprint account too, I figured I could change my Sprint number, free up my original, and then reactivate my Verizon account.

After I changed my Sprint number, Verizon informed me that although my original number was now available, it was Sprint’s property and that Verizon couldn’t touch it. To transfer it back to Verizon, they said, I’d need to have a Sprint account using it. Unyielding computer systems win again over common sense.

To add insult to injury, Sprint won’t even let me have my original number back. (Another victory for the computers.) So now I have Verizon’s $175 charge, and I’ve lost my original, four-year old number for nothing. (Not that anyone calls me anyway.) Had I not ported my number in the first place, I probably could have reactivated my Verizon account and had that fee waived. Who knew number portability would bite me in the ass like this?

And did I mention that the Sprint phone was a gift?

I give up. I suppose I’ll pay the stupid fee.

I’ve been at VMware for a month now. I like it there, and I think I’m settling in, though everything still feels a little surreal (virtual?) sometimes. I’m a bit stressed out worrying that I’m not going to live up to their expectations.

On one hand, I learned more at Sony than I thought I did. (All that free time I spent reading things like the comp.lang.c newsgroup probably helped.) On the other hand, I learned much less than I would have elsewhere, so I’m still way behind the curve.

New VMware hires get a license plate holder that says “Virtualized by VMware”. Someone asked me if I put it on my car. “No,” I said, “I don’t want to besmirch the company’s good name with my bad driving.”

I really don’t understand the practice of adorning cars with bumper stickers, custom license plate holders, or other knick-knacks. What good can come of it? The only time anyone is going to read them, care, and remember is if you screw up. No one’s going to credit you, “Wow, that guy works at VMware, and he uses a turn signal!”

Plus, If I accidentally pissed someone off, I think I’d prefer that they not be able to track me down easily.

A few weeks ago, I got a new cell phone and switched from Verizon Wireless to Sprint.

I didn’t remember when I purchased my old phone or what the terms of my service agreement were, so I went to Verizon’s website to look up my account information first.

Current calling plan:
America’s Choice 300 General .00 Long Distance $35.00 1y 0502

I interpreted this information to mean that I had a one-year commitment starting in May 2002. I assumed I was free and clear, so I switched carriers.

I then got slapped with a $175 early termination fee.

I called Verizon. It turns out that I had a two-year commitment and that the “1y” is an internal code not meant to be decipherable by users. To add insult to injury, I missed my end date by only two weeks.

There are a couple of things wrong here:

• Verizon’s website provides no clear information about what the contract duration is.
• Verizon’s website provides external access to internal information. If something is for internal use only, keep it internal. Otherwise people will assume that information is supposed to be relevant to them and is meant to be decipherable.

Had Verizon not generously provided useless but misleading information, I would have called them to find out my service agreement details. At best, Verizon is totally clueless and is too lazy to make their website usable. At worst, Verizon’s committing fraud. “1y” is readable enough to be misinterpreted but vague enough for Verizon to avoid accountability and to claim that they didn’t lie outright.

Of course, it’s not in Verizon’s best interests to let people know when their agreements expire, so what do I really expect?

One of the main reasons I switched away from Verizon at all was because I was throwing money away; each month I paid $35 for less than 10 minutes of actual usage. Sigh.

I thought I was out of stupid Sony stories, but my former coworker Kevin was surprised that I hadn’t mentioned anything about the spiders.

What Japanese company wouldn’t have a special and conveniently accessible smoking area? The Sony building in San José has a fairly large atrium for such a purpose, complete with benches, trees, hedges, and a weird modern art sculpture. It also was infested with grasshoppers.

For some reason, birds within the atrium were rather rare. Maybe they didn’t want to be boxed in; maybe they were afraid of the humans who were constantly loitering around there; maybe they just didn’t want to get lung cancer. For whatever reason, birds ignored this plentiful food source, and the grasshoppers thrived.

The atrium also had a population of garden spiders. (A western spotted orb weaver, I think.) They were fairly large (not including their legs, they were about the size of a quarter), and they constructed gorgeous and expansive webs.

Every summer, these spiders emerged, fully mature, seemingly from nowhere. Every day of every summer, I tried to capture grasshoppers to place into the spiders’ webs.

Feeding the spiders was one of the few things that made my days at Sony enjoyable. Every fall I was sad when the spiders disappeared.

I guess I’m a sadist.

Miscellaneous happenings:

• Sony had a very restrictive Internet proxy server; it didn’t allow ssh, newsgroup access, or instant messagers (AIM worked eventually, though). I had the “bright” idea of resorting to a dial-up ISP with my second phone line. (I split a cubicle with someone else. There was a telephone line for each of us, but we shared one instead, giving us one extra.) Of course, businesses don’t have flat-rate local calling plans like residences do, which isn’t something I realized until after I had racked up many hundreds of dollars’ worth of telephone charges. Oops.

• One day, on my way to the bathroom, I overheard part of a telephone conversation: “Sony. S-O-N-Y. Like the televisions.” I could only wonder what planet the other person was from; who hasn’t heard of Sony?

• Sony provides an emulator for the CLIÉ handheld. It’s based off of PalmSource’s standard Palm OS Emulator, which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). For anyone not familiar with the GPL, the gist is that any derived work must have its source code available. (This is a gross oversimplification for a number of reasons, but it’s close enough.) Sony sometimes was delinquent at providing the source code. (Developers want tools available yesterday; GPL zealots say nothing should be provided without source. There’s no pleasing everyone.)

  Eventually, one of my worst fears came true and someone submitted a story to Slashdot about the lack of code. We were used to receiving hate mail, but were we prepared to deal with a gajillion emails from angry, GPL-crazed Slashdot readers?

  We received only one email about it. The complainant didn’t even understand the GPL all that well.

• After too many incidents of rolling into work at around noon-time, my manager instituted a policy: If you can’t make it in by 10:30 AM, don’t bother coming in at all. Uh, so rather than showing up late and putting in 8+ hours of work, I should take the entire day off from a job I hate? Okay.

• I wasn’t there for this, so this is second-hand information: apparently, after I left Sony, they almost hired another person named “James Lin” to replace me. Bizarre. Some cheap Chinese knockoff, no doubt. I wonder if they would have tried to pass him off as me in emails. (Not that Sony didn’t have enough James Lins working for them already; Sony’s silly Microsoft Exchange mail server regularly got confused and sent me mail intended for other James Lins.)

Incidentally, for anyone who ever wanted to know about the meaning and design of Sony’s “VAIO” name: The Origin and Philosophy of VAIO(R) PCs. The “VAIO-let” color scheme is a clever touch.

Somehow, though, I don’t think that kind of thought or ingenuity went into the oft-mispronounced “CLIÉ” name.

My official job title at Sony was “Developer Technical Support Engineer”. I answered programming questions from third-party software developers.

For some reason, I expected programmers to be smarter than the average bear. At the very least, I expected them to know how to ask reasonably intelligent questions, since programmers are on the other side of the fence when their own users submit questions and bug reports.

Boy, was I wrong.

We received a number of emails that looked like:

FunctionFoo() doesn’t work.

to which I’d have to reply with:

Thank you for reporting this issue to us. However, we are unable to reproduce your problem; to speed up our investigation, please provide more information about:

• what specific model you’re using (Sony has a lot of models)
• whether you’re using a physical device or an emulator
• exactly why you think FunctionFoo() doesn’t work (what do you expect to happen, and what actually happens?)
• exactly what arguments you pass to FunctionFoo()

Please provide a snippet of code to reproduce this problem if possible.

(Actually, I usually was a little less polite.)

Even when people did submit code snippets, for inexplicable reasons they too often thought it was easier to retype their code rather than to copy-and-paste it, hence introducing new errors into their code or sometimes removing the actual ones.

In retrospect, it’s not too surprising we received the sorts of questions we did. The smart people usually were able to solve their problems on their own. They also knew that Sony’s technical support services had an abysmal reputation and to avoid them at all costs.