Modeling Magic

I never dreamed I'd ever come to find business software an interesting domain to study but that's exactly what's happened.

Like it was for many people, I first got interested in programming because of games. In fact I can trace my interest to a specific event; I was about 10 and I was playing a game on an Atari 400 computer and realized I had absolutely no understanding of how it worked. Prior to that moment I thought there was nothing in the world more complex than a light switch but after that moment I wasn't so sure. I had to learn how it worked; was it magic or a light switch?

Well of course it was a light switch, a gazillion of them all packed on to a chip in fact, but while I was learning that I came to a realization, apparently one all programmers make; The only way to demonstrate your understanding of something was to model it in software.

So now I find myself trying to model business processes but I'm not 100% sure there's not a bit of magic in this light switch.

The Application Appliance

This post is the continuation of a thread that started with: Opportunities

The hardware it's self would not be remarkable in anyway and since I'm really only interested in the software stack the logical choice is to resell some other vendors machines preconfigured to meet my needs.

At this point I'm not exactly sure who's machines I'll use but I'd prefer it to be a vendor that sees Ubuntu (or maybe Debian) as a first class target. My short list at the moment really only contains System76 so if anyone has any other suggestions I'd love to hear from you?

The software on the other hand is much more interesting. The software will be delivered through a private apt repository as customized packages and include specifically configured base tools such as Apache, Postgres and Ruby as well as management tools for deployment, monitoring, replication and backup.

Now obviously there's nothing special about this approach, in fact that's kind of the point. I don't want to have to re-think the simple standard parts I want to focus on the newer more unique parts. The management tools, replication and fail over to cloud services, etc...

More later....

My Opinionated Application Stack

This post is the continuation of a thread that started with: Opportunities

Recently I've been thinking a lot about different ways to minimize duplication of work. Many of my projects have similar requirements, how best can I reuse the effort from one to the next?

I've also been puzzling over another problem; How do I provide businesses with reliable application when they don't have the necessary I.T. support to manage it and they don't have a reliable enough internet connection to go the "software as a service" route?

It turns out that both questions may have the same answer. An application appliance! A low cost plug and play application server that's configured with a well defined software stack and the ability to backup to a remote service that is able to double as a warm standby in a pinch.

In future posts I'll explain in more detail.

Opportunities

A driving belief of mine is that there's an enormous long tail associated with the custom business software market. It exists because software development is difficult and in the past only the deepest pockets have typically tried to tackle the problem but I think this has already began to change! Things like agile test driven development methodologies, the use of free software, and opinionated design are going to make it a reality.

I'd like to share my recipe for this but you'll need to keep in mind I'm focusing on the really (really) small business that just doesn't register on the radar of more established custom software providers.

It's really simple and goes something like this...

Stick to the small projects that can be completed quickly. Every business has itches that need to be scratched. Keep the customer involved, which should be easy if you're focusing on a real itches and provide a turn key (nearly) zero administration solution.

Which gets me to what I wanted to talk about, my opinionated application stack