Today I cracked up some heads to poor in some OO thinking.  A number of daring lads and lassies (youngest with +12y Cobol programming experience) sent off by their boss to this day of "OO introduction and awareness" and to next week's Java intro, heard me introduce OO concepts, place UML diagrams, and tell (hopefully eye-opening) "why OOP" stories.

In every case the "why UML" didn't come out as the classic "a picture says more then a thousand words" cliche... I found myself prooving how pictures succeeded at doing this in terms of exploiting 2 dimensions in stead of only one in the case of the classic sequence of words...

Actually this was triggered by a student's question: "Where in the [class-]diagram do I start reading?"  A sure primer in my training experience to date... Hiding my astonishment I responded with a question (a decoy technique that is one of my favourites in the list of tips-and-tricks-for-bluffing-your-way-out-at-seminars, another one being pretending you have a big list of tips, but you never get past the second one, by then nobody remembers anyway) 

In every case here is my counter-question:  "If you look around in the big world (e.g. when driving your car), where do you start looking/scanning the image?" 

It bought me enough time (and already even satisfied nodding students) to produce: "It's often a good idea to start off with the thing that has the most lines to it, that's often the leading role in the story that diagram wants to tell." (personally I would find myself writing my diagrams in such a way that these are placed in the top-middle to centre of the diagram's rectangle, wondering if that actually matches human's common optical-interest-hot-spot)

The 2D story idea surely triggered some memory-synaps. Check out the picture diary of ex-colleague Karen.  Actually knowing how she *lives* Color.  I would guess she would credit 'color' with at least one more dimension in story telling...

11:59:01 PM    

... or was it perception is reality

[1] (see pic) This weekend I exposed my kids to culturally accepted collective lies. (at least I'm honest about this).  Apart from the lies, this is a great time to come to Belgium: it is spekuloos-season.

[2] This is news :: I watched TV :: The canvas program Nachtwacht succeeded in grabbing my attention with a (for this medium quite unseen) intelligence-depth in a uttermost simple format: broadcast wise men talking. (Steven would call them clueful people)

There was to learn that:

• 'Empowerment' is false by design: power that is offered to you can never be true power. Self-organized emancipation is the only alternative.
• Succesful emancipation means you're left to control yourself in a way that there is no-more-some-one-else-to-blaim. Scary.
• Regarding the above the concept of *borders* be they national, geographical, cultural or social exist often if not only in the mind of those that stop in front of them.

[3] Along my zap-adventures I even saw Burgemeester Bart Somers of Mechelen make some politic-incorrect statements in the light of the current news-dominating immigrants-topic in Belgium. A seldom relieve.  In the light of the above this guy basically was stating that the immigrant-community should stop asking for empowerment (through jobs) and just start working to get what they want for themselves. Oh yes, that might mean on the way up: learning (there is even a choice here) the national language, and cut some of the sharp edges on the heimat-culture that prevent all too much the social-work-fit-in.

Of course life is just not fair for those having a culture without Sinterklaas. 

10:38:48 PM