Humour

Grooming stray cats

T A Balasubramanian on cats who badly need scrubbing

“Well, there are more character sketches listed in the menagerie of cats here by Mr Bond,” says Gulabi Manpowa, with a look that suggests years of tolerant listening to the highs and lows of corporate IT melodramas. “He calls them the strays, and says that these are already in the herd, badly in need of scrubbing.”

You, Papyrus Bytewala, the sleepless CIO of Baffle Corporation, are sitting at the large round conference table facing Ms Manpowa, and working your way down through your list of “people requirement projections,” an annual ritual. Drawn up in ponderous style by your incorrigible project team leader, Brooke Bond, the profiles are an expansion of his imagination. It is up to you to temper their unruly passages with a dash of realism and perhaps even clarity.

“Ah, the strays. Yes, we do have them, scruffy and in need of grooming. So what does he say?”

“The first is what he calls the Slacker. He says, ‘Not much good to say here about this breed. Some cats are just born sloppy and it shows in their style of writing code. They start out with one style and after one or two procedures, they move on to another. Following their work is painful and sometimes I have to rewrite all of it late at night just to be sure it works. It is up to me to meet the deadline. It is I, the Slacker’s manager who gets to face the heat from the client. They are just cats who should be transferred to beta testing in the back alleys. No, forget that—it would only move the problem down the path a bit and it could come back to bite you.’”

“Umm, Brooke does love to shower the world with news about how hard he works, but he is quite right, Gulabi. These are creatures that ignore small things like properly spelled names. They are weighed down by personal problems that come in the way of doing neat work. What Slackers do need is some kindly soul who can spare the time to guide them in out of their scruffy ways.”

“So do you want to keep the Slackers in your mix?”

“I suppose some of them can be rehabilitated if they really love writing code. I am willing to hold them. Those that cannot may just need a metaphorical kick in the rear. Or a grueling session with you, Gulabi, in your role as job placement counselor.”

“Which is an honor I would rather not have, Papyrus. Next on Brooke’s list is the Mouse. ‘Maybe it is odd to call a cat by this name, but this cat is frozen by timidity and she or he does not know where to begin. There is no way a Mouse will act without looking like a furtive rodent.’ I must say Brooke tends to create his metaphors wildly, Papyrus. Now he is into mixed species.”

“There is no better description, and I think you cannot expect too much of poetry in my field, Gulabi—and anyways, Brooke is no great shakes with the art of writing, as you have noticed. But not to worry, being intimidated, like the Mouse, can be a good thing for this mixed-up cat, if it leads to careful code, even if it is the result of the poor creature not wanting to create runtime errors. Our job is to give the Mouse some prototype code that shows her or him where to begin, and maybe even a style to copy. A good Mouse responds to well-placed cheese, I always say.”

“We do get these shysters in other areas, too. What do you suppose makes them so jittery?”

“Well if they have just a few years in the profession under their belts, they do lack the bravado and macho style of their more predatory elders, the Big Cats. You may also find timidity in an experienced cat that has not had such a great track record. Maybe the last performance review was terrible, and this time, the poor animal is afraid of being hounded up a tree. Lack of confidence often shows up as the main Mouse trait, so we push them ahead gently, maybe with a pat and a nip of cheese. And they do respond to the milk of human kindness, I can tell you.”

“So I would presume that these helpless strays are going to be in for the run with you?”

“You can presume that, yes. What else do we have?”

“The Codistas, says Brooke. ‘They are programmers-in-the making, and they tend to drift in from the ranks of hackers as power users of some macro-writing tool. They are like stray cats that have abandoned their cushy role in service and support or in testing because they fancy being programmers.’ So you have guys who really think that you run a cool school for them at Baffle. And are you all that cool yourself, Papyrus?” says Gulabi, winking.

“Of course, we are cool, Gulabi,” you reply, in your most casual voice. “But, let me be modest. The coolness is just a spin-off of what we do. These Codistas—where does Brooke get these coinage brainwaves, I wonder?—these are the ones who need a good dose of education. I have to keep a harness on them and mark their progress up the learning tree before I let them handle mission-critical applications.”

“Hmm. And they stay with you all the way up the tree?”

“Not many do. These restless strays often become disillusioned with the projects once they realize just how hard programming can be as a discipline. It is rare for a Codista to pay attention to detail, and in programming, as you know, the devil is in the details.”

“So what madness would possess you to have them around?”

“If you really think about it, Codistas are amateurs who love to dabble, not burn themselves out trying to be perfectionists. And it was the amateurs who built the Ark, while professionals built the Titanic. Besides, the fresh viewpoint of an amateur can be helpful to us really jaded, long-in-the-tooth techno-grouches.”

“I would not disagree with that, Papyrus. But tell me, how do you get strays in your team in the first place? I mean, did you encourage them to walk in from the street?”

“What can I do, Gulabi? Strays, as you might expect, are not very desirable, but they do exist in the IT world, where the strange blending of the loopy and the orderly, the creative and the rational, go hand-in-hand. So we need to recognize them. Strays can work out fine, as long as you wash them up and push their skills to overcome the unpredictability they inherently bring to the coding process.”

“You mean you have no way to catch them before they stray?”

“Hmm, no. Usually, we get the good and the bad together, so we tend to gloss over the flaws. Now all this makes the art of grooming strays a challenge, but well worth the effort. Software engineers are awfully complex people. I keep telling Brooke that he should relish the differences and unique styles of each breed. But I don’t think they are unique to the IT business. Most of us might probably recognize many of these traits the next time we look in to the mirror.”

“The mirror, Papyrus? You do make such insightful remarks about us,” drawls Manpowa, looking at you with an icy stare.