So I’ve switched roles at Microsoft. For the last 11.5 years at Microsoft (which is 9.5 years longer than I thought I’d be here), I’ve been in some form of developer relations. However, I’ve never shipped a product at Microsoft.

In my new role, I’m joining the Web Platform Team to run the Web Applications and Frameworks team – my new title is the Principle PM for WAF. I’m managing two products related to people writing apps with web technologies. The first is WWAHost which is how we write Progressive Web Apps which are native apps written with web standards and technologies.
Check out Get started with Progressive Web Apps for more details.

The second is Webview which is how you incorporate web tech into a standard native app written in .NET, C++ and so on.
Check out Microsoft Edge WebView for Windows 10 apps for more details.

I also work with JavaScript frameworks internal and external to Microsoft. To this end, I’ve got a great dev on my team named John-David Dalton. He’s had a continuous streak of activity on Github since July 23, 2013. This has included building lodash, contributions to Babble and even as far as adding ESM support to Node.JS and NPM.

I’m looking forward to shipping a product that touches millions of people. 🙂

There are times that your customer will ask you to do something so you do it. But did you stop to ask them about why they need that done? The story here is an old one that you might have heard but recently someone gave me an addition to the story and it blew my mind.

If someone comes to you in the hardware store and asks for a quarter inch drill bit, what do they actually want? Quarter inch holes. A drill bit is just a tool and if there’s a better way to give them the quarter inch hole, give it to them.
The addition was, now ask why they want quarter inch holes… Turns out they are hanging a ceiling fan. Ask them why they are hanging a ceiling fan. Turns out they are trying to sell their house and they were told that a ceiling fan in the bedroom would help. Ask if you could come take a look… Turns out that the paint outside is faded and cracked so the reality is that when they asked for a quarter inch drill bit, really they needed 5 gallons of paint and a ladder and in all honesty, they should slap you for selling them the drill bit.

I’ve been reflecting on this a while and I’ve come to the following…

I’ve long had a philosophy that I’d like to

“Do something, anything, even the wrong thing, learn from it and iterate.”

This has been my guiding light and has helped me keep from getting stuck in analysis paralysis and drives the analytical people around me absolutely nuts (Looking at you Gary Sweeting…) 🙂
That said, I was talking to my new friend that I met at Collision Conf this week, Bas Wouterse (CTO at http://telm.nl), and I realized that I’m slightly off there. It was an aha moment for me as I realized that I’ve been voicing my actual process wrong for years.

Here’s my new motto

“I’d rather do the wrong thing than solve the wrong problem”

The original motto still applies once I figure out what the problem is that I’m solving but it’s not enough to just start doing stuff. I was out with a young developer who asked what’s the difference between an architect and a developer. My answer was “An architect is an experienced developer who cares about the requirements phase of the project.” And that’s the case. I care about the requirements. I’ll investigate until I get a grasp of the problem. Then I’ll start doing stuff in that direction. I’m normally wrong in my approach the first several times. However, as I get more experience, I have gotten better about being less wrong about my direction even in those early phases. The trick is to quickly realize that I’ve made a mistake and fix it. I don’t try to make mistakes, however I’m not scared to make them.

The biggest mistake though, as I’m learning from my previous mistakes, is to solve the wrong problem. It doesn’t matter how correct your solution is if it’s the wrong problem. This goes from macro to micro.

At the macro level, I’ve met a ton of startups who are solving the wrong problem. Normally this means that they are solving a problem that their users have but not solving a problem that their potential customers have. Noodle on that a bit… 🙂

On a micro level, customers always tell me that X is not responsive enough or something very generic and sweeping like that. Rather than digging into the speed testing and all that, I ask them what they mean and start unpacking “responsive” means to them specifically. Often it turns out that you and your customer have very different definitions of responsive. Once you figure out what responsive means, anything that you do to solve the responsiveness issue has a much higher probability of being a step in the right direction.

Summing up, spend the time to ask that next question that will get you closer to solving the right problem.

At PHP Tek 2014, I saw a set of talks organized by a guy named Ed Finkler. This included a talk by Greg Baugues and Paddy Foran. They really opened up and talked about their own mental health issues including anxiety, depression and more. There was not a dry eye in the house. I’m not going to tell their story. That’s their to share. What I am going to share is how it affected me and my story.

Reason I’m blogging about this now is that I recently had a chance to interview Ed and post that to Code to Live.

I’ve always joked about having ADHD but it was always just a joke. My wife, Phoebe, was talking to someone (I don’t remember who) and they recommended that I read a book called Delivered from Distraction.  The first thing that I did when the book came in was the self diagnosis and wow did I score highly on that. The one set of questions that I missed on were the ones about relationships. I got lucky and married a very supportive wife. One of the big things that I learned was that one of the dark sides of ADHD is that people with it suffer from low self-esteem and depression. While I’ve suffered from this myself, I had never attributed it to ADHD and while I joked about it, I hadn’t thought that I actually had it or had any idea how to deal with it until I read the book. And very importantly, I was making the biggest mistake that most people make here – I was trying to deal with it on my own rather than seeking help.

Shortly after this I went to a therapist who specializes in ADHD. He worked with a phycologist and between the two, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD in 2008. I was prescribed with Adderall. The good news is that I knew what that was because I had read about it and the upsides and the side affects. There are two basic types of ADHD meds, anti-depressants and stimulants. They work very differently and sometimes one works better for one person than the other. If you suffer from ADHD, you should work with your mental health professional(s) to figure out what’s going to work for you.

This happened in 2008 but the reality is that I didn’t talk to people other than good friends until 2014 because I was ashamed about it. Ed, Greg and Paddy showed me that we need to talk about mental illness and take away the stigmas. That’s the only way that we can actually create a supportive and healthy environment. The worst thing that we can do is try to suffer in silence and not seek help.

If you want to learn more, if you’re suffering or are not sure if you’re suffering a mental health issue, there are resources up on Ed’s site at http://osmihelp.org.

I recently got back from an amazing trip to Costa Rica. It was absolutely amazing and has changed me (I hope) forever and for the better. Unfortunately it wasn’t 31 days, but rather it was only 8 days. However I’m taking on a writing challenge of writing something every single day for 31 days straight. I decided to write about the change in my life…

¡Pura Vida! is the Costa Rican way of life. Translated it’s “pure life” which sounds pretty simple but in practice it goes much deeper. Most of the time folks look at it as just like a “hang loose” or something like that. But it goes a lot deeper than that.

It started in a 1956 film from Mexico called Pura Vida in which the main character said the catch phrase all the time as an expression of unbridled enthusiasm. The movie was a hit and the phrase started spreading. It was slow but by the 1970s, it was all over Costa Rica. It was even officially recognized in dictionaries in the 90s.

The phrase really means that life is wonderful, that there is always someone who is less fortunate that you and we are all in this together. This pervasive outlook on life is outstanding and something that more of us need to adopt.

As I looked around Costa Rica, I saw some real poverty but everywhere I looked I saw amazing generosity, joy and community. Jeremy Sublet and I were driving through a small town and stopped for lunch. The town obviously didn’t have any money and everywhere I looked I saw joy and love whether it was couples walking in the park or having lunch together or kids playing in the streets. At the end lunch, we were headed back to the car when one of the guys at the bar held up his beer to us and I heard that phrase for the first time – “¡Pura Vida!”.

At the time I didn’t understand what it meant. But I laughed and said “¡Pura Vida!”.

Now that I understand more about it, I look at my life and think about all of the times when I’m wallowing in self pity. Yes, I have hardships in my life. But there are so many people who have so many more real troubles in their life.

Over the next 31 days, I’ll be writing about ¡Pura Vida! and how I’m going to be trying to incorporate it into my life.

Justin Bronder in a boat at Rio Clara

The first time that I met Justin Bronder, he was just back from a trip that he acted like was the trip of a lifetime. He showed me amazing pictures of obscure birds and crazy little monkeys. Actually, the first picture that I saw was of a monkey’s behind as it mooned the camera. I thought he was nuts, that he was was awesome and that we’d be friends all at the same time. Turns out I was right on all accounts.

Fast forward a year and I know for a fact that Justin has got one of the biggest hearts that I know. And amazingly, he headed back to Costa Rica and invited me to come with him. Something in Costa Rica had touched him and he wanted to share that with more people.

The restaurant at Copa de Arbol at night.

While I was excited to go, I really didn’t know what to expect. Justin had talked about the both the jungle and 5 star resort and pointed me at the hotel web site – http://www.copadearbol.com. When I looked at the web site, I saw that it was both – a 5 star resort in the middle of the jungle. There were some other things that were fun. The resort is right on the edge of the Corcovada National Part which is a green zone. There’s no roads to the property so everything is water taxi or hiking. That made me even more excited.

I talked to my wife and got permission to go.

Honestly though, I didn’t spend enough time researching Costa Rica. That was a failing on my part.But I didn’t look at the amazing country that I was about to go to other than seeing it’s in Central America. I spent a little time reviewing my pathetic Spanish. “Gracias”, “Hola”, “Adios”, “Caliente”, “Frío”,  “Uno, “Dos”, “Tres”…  I spent some time looking at my camera gear, picking up waterproof backpacks (I picked up an awesome one – Phantom Aquatics Walrus 25 Premium Waterproof Backpack Dry Bag) and the like.

It was all completely selfish but the good news is that despite this failing, I was ready to start packing for the trip.

IoT is hotter than ever and there are a ton of folks getting jazzed about the Raspberry PI 2, the Arduino, Intel Edison and other awesome and cheap devices that are incredibly powerful. The issue is that these are maker boards designed for hobbyists, not production boards that you could actually leverage in a real production product. This is deliberate on their part as they are going after a specific audience and they do an outstanding job of it. There are a ton of folks prototyping on these boards, as they should, and getting their proof of concept running. But then, there needs to be a path to production. The great news here is that there are a lot of great paths depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and what features you need in your board.

It’s a good idea to start with your path to production in mind when you pick your maker board. Reason being, if you have a similar chipset and capabilities to what you’re going to go to production with, it’ll minimize churn when you get to that point. If you’re going to be going to production with a minimal real time operating system, it’s probably a bad idea to start with an x86 board with gigs of ram and processing power.

Embedded OS Options

Since it affects your chipset choice, the first thing is to talk about the different embedded OS options and their capabilities. The options range from real time operating systems (RTOS) to embedded Linux to many different flavors of Windows.

The first question is what are you trying to accomplish? What’s your device going to be doing?

Power systems make a huge part of this choice for you. Is it going to be battery operated? Rechargeable? Constant wall power?

Is it going to be doing communications? With what? Over what type of radio?

How are you doing security?

Are you doing processing on the device? Or is it simply a remote sensor or actuator of some sort?

How complicated is the processing that it needs to do?

Obviously cost is also a factor. What’s your target “BOM” or Bill of Materials?

How large is the space you’re going to put it in? Does your device have ventilation? Some processors require more robust cooling systems or have more sensitive temperature ranges. It matters if you’re putting a device in the arctic circle or in the middle of death valley.

What’s your development language? Realize that I put this fairly far down the list of considerations because it’s possible you are going to have a language forced on you. But if you can choose, would you prefer C, C++, Python, JavaScript, .NET or what.

That’s a lot of questions but it really drives down to four basic options that are chosen most of the time, Windows, Linux, an RTOS (real time operating system) or a microcontroller where you are writing firmware.

Windows 10 IoT Core is the current build of Windows for smaller devices. Your options for development are the languages that run on Windows 10. That’s quite a few including C, C++, .NET or any other type of runtime that runs on Windows so you can get Python, Javascript/node.js and the like to run on it. This makes it an extremely versatile option. It’s also a very robust option when you’re talking about security, communications and the like. If you want to get started on this option, check out http://ms-iot.github.io/content/GetStarted.htm. The downside on Windows 10 IoT Core is that it’s limited to the x86/x64, Atom and ARM chips.

Linux is another great choice. On many devices you can run something as big as Ubuntu however there are a number of variants of Linux that are specifically built for embedded devices. The one that I’m most familiar with is OpenWRT. It was originally built for firmware on routers but it’s a tough little operating system that works well on a lot of little devices. It’s more limited on languages in that it doesn’t run .NET but you can run C, C++, Python, node.js, Java and the like. It’s also able to do communications and security just fine. And it runs on a very wide set of processors.

The downsides of both of these options is that while they have more capabilities, they have latency compared to an RTOS. If you really need real time, you’ll need to look at something a little deeper but to be honest, it’s been years since I’ve done anything with real time. I’m usually close enough that the user doesn’t notice vs the exact number of milliseconds matter.

The other option is some type of firmware where you’re skipping the operating system completely and programming the device to do exactly one thing and do that thing well (theoretically). In these cases, typically security and long range communications are offloaded to a gateway device that is running one of the above options.

Chipset Options

The second thing to do is talk about the types of chipsets and their capabilities. I’m not going to go through every possible chipset in the world but there’s a few that are specifically focused on the IoT.

Of course you can run an x84/x64 if you are going to be on constant power or at least near power. The Intel Galileo is maker board based on this chipset. It runs Linux and Windows Embedded (that’s prior to Windows 10 IoT Core)

Intel’s Atom processor is the next on the list. This is a great little chipset built for lower power consumption and longer battery life than the x86/x64 chipsets. These can still run many flavors of Windows as well as Linux. A great prototyping/maker board for this is the Raspberry PI 2. It’s running a 900 MHz quad core Atom processor.

The Intel Edison runs a Quark processor, comes with BLE and WiFi on board and the whole system can fit inside an SD card if you need the space. It runs Linux. I’m not wild about Intel’s toolchain for development but it’s a good chip.

Atheros is another great chose if you are looking at Linux as your host. A great board for this is the Arduino Yun. It has both an Amtel chip for more real time/micro controller options as well as the Atheros chip for running linux. Their default distros are running OpenWRT.

The Amtel chipset is the first microcontroller that we’re going to talk about. These are even lower power consumption than the Atom but they also have less capabilities. The huge advantage that these bring to the table is that there is very little that can go wrong with them. Since you are basically writing firmware, you can just plug them in and let them run. The Arduino is an example of a maker board that you can use with the Amtel chipset.

There are lots of other chipsets that are pretty awesome but I’m going to skip those for now

Manufacturer Options

There are a ton of manufacturers that are out there. Before you pick your manufacturer, you should pick your chipset and then start shipping around.

Dog Hunter is the manufacturer behind the linux system on a chip that’s on the Arduino Yun. They’ve got a great little chip called the Chiwawa. In quantities of 5000 or more, you can get these down to sub $10.

Intel is obviously the manufacturer of the Edison. They are a known quantity and know how to produce in quantity. They also make a Quark SOC that’s a well-established chipset.

The reality is though that you might need to go to China and meet with some of the manufacturers yourself. But to meet these folks, you have to know where to go. The great news is that there’s a ton of great resources to help you locate a partner and start conversations. GlobalSources.com, ThomasNet and Alibaba.com are a great starting point for components. It’s like the Yellow Pages for manufacturing. If you start looking through, you’ll find folks that do production for all the major players such as Nokia but also for little guys. But don’t trust what’s on their web site as your end all be all. First of all, manufacturer’s websites are A: marketing and B: notoriously out of date and poorly designed. Research the companies looking in your favorite search engine for the manufacturer’s name and the words “scam” or “fraud” or “fail”.

Quantity Options

In physical manufacturing, quantity matters. It takes time and effort to set up the manufacturing of a given item. There is also the possibility that there’s specialty equipment and the like that either needs to be purchased or tuned to make your device. Both of these, time and equipment, cost a lot of money. That price needs to be amortized across a large number of units in order to really drive the cost down. If you want 10-20 of a small device, expect to be paying hundreds to thousands each just for the setup and manufacturing before you get to your “BOM” or Bill of Materials. Reality is that if you are only ordering a couple hundred devices, that’s a “small run”. In fact, some manufacturers look at anything less than 10k as a small run. This means that either they are not interested or the price goes up fairly dramatically. That said, don’t go do a run of 10k of something without verifying that it works and that customers like it.

Summary

There’s a lot of questions that you have to answer before you get started building. Most people start with the board that they get cheap at Radio Shack but don’t think down the line for when they are going to try to go to production. Before you make that mistake, think through the choices that you’re going to need to make and then pick a board that’s a good fit for you.

BTW – I talked about some of this on the .NET Rocks Episode 1144 – Getting Practical with IoT…