My colleague Stephanie, or Stevie, and I have working together for over six years. We’ve written commercial software that has managed billions in U.S. federal government funds. We’ve written software that helps an airline inspect their ramp operations. In the past, I worked on a team that use software to catch bad guys. The Electrotest project started in December of 2021. The audience for this podcast includes business folks who must manage data, manage software, or manage software development. Additionally, the audience includes technical folk interested in Oracle database application development. 

I blend story-based narrative with some technology and real-world business examples.

We learned of the project during the fall of 2021 as negotiations became an open secret within our team. I designated 06 DEC 2021 as the official start of the project. Reviewing my email one year later, I see that through the middle part of December of 2021, we were transitioning from one European-based client to this new client in Belgium. On 22 December 2021, I have an email with the subject line: een paar issues meaning “a few issues”.  

We spent most of that month finding our footing. We set up the tools needed to share code via GitHub. We established our management process with tickets and workflows. In our first European/Belgium project, we were late to the team. We came in with specific expertise. We communicated only with the existing development team who were located in Slovenia and Belgium. We never met the client. Lovely project. We came in as the “pros from Dover”. 

Through this podcast, I intend to illustrate that: 

My father, a novelist, once said: “Writing well requires thinking well”. My corollary to that statement is that: “Good code requires good thinking”. No one can write good code without clarity. 

I derive the same satisfaction from writing code as I do from writing stories. That thought; that vision; that story; that process in my brain needs to be communicated to another. That thought needs to be understood by another. That thought, when communicated, must be logical. My friend and colleague in Belgium seduced me by stating that this project is ours. We will start from scratch, from a white piece of blank paper, from an empty database, from a green field that has never been turned. The statement proved to be a little wrong. Who cares, he proved himself to be mostly correct. Yay! 

We are a couple of North American programmers based on the East Coast. I am in New England. Stevie is in Virginia. Eli, whom you’ll meet later in the series, lives now in Washington State. Our client and project manager live in Belgium. We got hired for this job precisely because we are experts in back-office functions such as invoicing, regulatory affairs, document management and all of the boring things that keeps our global economy rolling along.

Our client is a Belgium firm called Electrotest. This company inspects industrial and residential properties focusing on regulatory compliance and health/safety concerns. These are the guys who inspect lifts/elevators and cranes and smoke detection systems and fuel/petrol stations. If there exists a nexus between safety, health, and human occupation, then Electrotest is likely to inspect it. In some cases, the inspections fall within governmental guidelines. In some cases, the inspections are required by the domestic gas companies of Belgium. In some cases, they provide the home or electrical inspections related to new construction or home sales. 

For listeners in the United States, this process does relate. Nearly all of us have stood in a hotel lift/elevator reading the safety certificate. In the U.S., this certificate tends to be issued by a municipal or local government official. Following new construction or remodeling of a home or office, a local government official tends to inspect and certify plumbing, electrical systems, fire prevent/fire detection systems. In the U.S. these processes are fragmented by municipal, state, and federal regulations. The Kingdom of Belgium has a population of more than 11.5 million people. The New York City metropolitan area has 20 million residents. New York City metropolitan area is about half the size of Belgium at 12000 square kilometers. Belgium is about 30000 square kilometers. The central government of Belgium seems both a bit more centralized than the US, but also complicated by having multiple cultural and language borders which sometimes have their own regulatory scope. For example, rules in Flanders may differ from Wallonia. 

Seriously, who wants simple?

Writing software for Electrotest to perform and report on their inspections is a bit simpler because of the stronger and centralized nature of these health and safety regulations. In my rural Vermont town where we trade eggs for homemade bacon and hang hams in the basement, I do my own electrical work. I’ve redone most of the plumbing in this house. We don’t do inspections here. There are no inspectors. It simply isn’t a thing. But a few kilometers over the line into Massachusetts, the process follows different rules because it is a different state. And we have fifty-four or fifty-five states (or state-like entities). I know, our flag only has 50 stars. There are 4 million American citizen in Puerto Rico who have no rights to vote in our national election, get no representation in our Congress, have no star on our flag, etc. We exceed others with our inconsistencies and shenanigans. 

From their offices near Brussels, Electrotest is able to provide inspection services to individuals (particularen) and corporations throughout Belgium. 

What does Electrotest need?

Bluntly, they need everything we can offer. Their staff appear excellent at their duties. Before we met them, they generated nearly 50,000 invoices per year by hand using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets. I will say this often during the 2023 series of “The Soul of an Internet Machine”, Excel is the world’s worst database. In fact, it is not a database. Oh, go argue with me. Blah, blah, you can query from column and select stuff, blah, blah. Go ahead, I’ll ignore you. Databases are relational and robust. Database use internal rules to maintain data integrity. Databases manage large, robust, complex data with grace and ease (if you have developers like us who make it graceful and easy). I shall not dive deeper in to their manual and internal system. They made the decision to modernize. We praise that decision. To their credit, they have tried numerous systems both commercial and custom over the years to make some improvements.

Can we automate systems for invoicing and save them money? How do we do that? Is money leaking out of their manual processes? Are they or were they losing money due to process management?

The first time I saw the CEO of Electrotest get quoted in the press for her endeavors she did not focus on the financial gains. Instead, she revealed several specific climate goals for the software. I never once thought that back-office automation of a national company could or would have a positive impact on climate policies. She made the connection.

In an early release, Stevie demonstrated some of our preliminary tools for planning inspections for inspectors. Through our digital connections, APIs, to mapping services at Google and Oracle, we can estimate both the travel time and the travel distance between two appointments. Therefore, this software can and will aid Electrotest in optimizing inspector’s travel. Yes, in days of escalating fuel and electricity costs, reducing the kilometers driven each day has a positive impact on our planet. It also saves the company money. A kilometer not driven is a bit of carbon not launched into our atmosphere. Yay for the home team.

Our team has grown since we started in December of 2021. Our internet machine, our software, exceeded several expectations, but not without hard work, small setbacks, frustrations, and immense joy. I love this project. I see how our work positively impacts the hundreds of people at Electrotest. I see that our work increases the value of this company and enhances their competitive position. I feel like a member of a winning team. That’s everything to me. 

I’ll digress before closing. I spent a year in Iraq as a civilian member of the United States Army during 2005 and 2006. I served as a technical specialist within a military unit. My boss was a major. Together, we supervised the activities of a platoon of soldiers. Their mission was to improve the digital communications platforms in central Iraq, although we travelled to Northern Iraq too. When we arrived with fiber optic or microwave systems, soldiers could call home and talk with family. Yes, all the secret military data moved better too. I walked about 10 kilometers most days in that blistering heat. We called ourselves “The ATT of Iraq”, and yes, we did interface with the local telephone company too. A long the way, we stood up antenna masts and poles. Often in the soft concrete, I would write my name or my initials or my call sign (the soldiers called me “Charlie Mike”). I can still find several of these poles and masts on Google Earth. I cannot zoom in well enough to see my little signature though. I admit the war was ill conceived, resulted in a disaster, and I happen to be there when a civil war broke out between two factions within the country. Basically, that all sucked. I envisioned that twenty years later, I could return to Iraq to see what remained of my work, of our work. 

That sense of seeing and touch your own efforts years later brings pride. Imagine being part of the team that built the Brooklyn Bridge or having an ancestor that built it. That’s pride. You look and say: “I built that!” Frankly, we are always part of a team. The pride we feel is personal. I look down from Google Earth and feel pride that once I did that. That’s mine. I was a part of that, that 1 pole, that 1 fiber optic line, that 1 microwave shot. 

That’s everything to me. I love that sense of pride from building something good, yes even in a horrible combat environment. The pride remains. I did that. We did that. I was a part of that. 

Our work contains a bit of our soul, our personality, our sweat, our tears (yes, occasional tears no matter how many times I insist: “There are no tears in software development”). That is our investment. The reflection of our work whether it is the Brooklyn Bridge, a tall mast tower in Iraq, or software is the reflection of our own effort. We put the soul into our machines. In the early 1980s, Tracey Kidder wrote a book called “The Soul of a New Machine” where he explored the process of building a new computer and told us stories of the people. He gave us a story about people while they built a thing. I challenge you to look at the modern tools around you, the software you use, and think to yourself: A team of human beings made this. That might lend to why? What decisions did they make? 

That’s what this series is about. How is it that a few human beings make stuff up, make things happen, and build a machine together.
What comes next for this series?

I’ll start at the beginning and explore the beginning from the perspective of a newbie to a team and a project. I’ll also bring in other points of view from other teammates. My personality will show through including some sour or frustrated opinions of some of the work I had to do. Yuck. And the great things we accomplished. You’ll get to know our team: Stevie, Eli, Dimitri, Bram, Dirk, and others as they join.