Projects directory structure

Background

For a very long time, I was following a directory structure very similar to what many others do: there was a directly projects in my home directory, that contained a list of all projects I was or am working. Some projects weren’t trivial and contained multiple modules, but the structure of projects directly was very simple. Project by itself would hold the source code project inside.

However, the further I go with project, the more issue I have with this structuring approach:

• Where should I put a documentation? Should it be next to the source code? Should it be in git?

• What about various media that is related to the project but has nothing to do with source code?

• What about the data, which also irrelevant to the source code, but important for data analysis?

• and many other questions.

Although the questions are different, they actually about the same topic: where do I put files that are not related to the source code in any way?

Workspaces

And today I’ve realized, that the problem is due to my outdates approach to structuring files. It came from days where my responsibility was mostly coding project, and source code was a central for my work. And while the responsibilities changed, the approach stayed the same.

Nowadays, I need more than just source code for most of the projects. Except source code, I need to collect data, notes, documents, articles and posts. And instead of placing documents into $HOME/docs/$PROJECT and data into $HOME/data/$PROJECT and source code into $HOME/projects/$PROJECT, I better put everything into same folder. And I didn’t find a better name for this type of folders than workspace. 

And goal is to switch from structure

$HOME/projects
    project1/
        .git/
        module1/
        module2/
        pom.xml
        todo.txt
    project2/

to 

$HOME/workspaces
    workspace1/
        docs/
        data/
        dev/
            todo.txt
        source/
            .git/
            module1/
            module2/
            pom.xml
        charts/
    workspace2
        docs/
        ideas/
        source/

Versioning

And then I faced a new question – should I put a whole workspace under version system control? If docs and data and whatever other resources are important for the project, why shouldn’t those be versioned and kept safe and readily available using version control system, like Git?

“That is actually a good idea!” I though, “But it would be better to have different git repositories for each part of the workspace. As documents and code are changed at different times and for different reasons.”

And that’s the decision I’ve made – it is a good practice to use version control for all parts of the workspace, but do not put a whole workspace into a single repository. 

Workspace is just a collection of various resources coupled by the same topic. So it is ok to have a desire to keep workspace organized and reproducible – it should be easy to create a new workspace, that someone else can use if need. This also makes the idea of separate repositories a good one – no everyone cares about data or docs.

The desire to put a whole workspace into single repository can be too strong at different moments, mostly b/c of the reasons described in previous paragraph. And that’s where Git submodules can be helpful.

Summary

What was good before might not be good anymore. We should revisit our approaches when we change or our responsibilities change. 

The previous structure that I’ve used for project directories was good for my needs. But my needs changed and thus the structure is not anymore. 

I need more than just have a structure for the source code or single project. I need a new way to organize files, that would cover a set of documents, source code and data for one or multiple related projects. 

And my solution to it is “workspace”.

Reinforcing feedback loops

There are two different types of feedback loops recognized in systems:

1. Balancing feedback loops
2. Reinforcing feedback loops

Balancing feedback loop controls inflow and outflow of resources. Example of it would be amount of money on the bank account. Amount increases if you put money into, and decreases if you withdraw them.

Reinforcing feedback loop is a different kind of animal. It isn't as strait forward as balancing feedback loop. Example of it would be interest rate for the bank account. The more you have money, the larger interest you get. The larger interest you get, the more money on you bank account you have. Another example of reinforcing feedback loop would be well know dependency between education and social status: if you have money, you can get better education, the better education you have, the more you can earn etc.

Many people are very focused on balancing feedback loops and give little attention to reinforcement feedback loops. At the same time latter one are very important in our life.

Reinforcing feedback loops are very important in our life. They can allow fast growth or decay. They are that magic behind growth of many successful companies.

The better Google's search is, the more people use it. The more people use it, the more data Google has to improve its search.

The better apps on your iPhone, the more you use it. The more you use it, the better apps are becoming. The better apps, the more you use iPhone. Similar thing with AppStore.

The more you invest into some company XTZ, they more money it would have. The more money they have, the more successful they are. The more successful they are, the more stock growths. The more stock growths, the more chances you keep investing.

And so many and many examples.

Reinforcement feedback loop is one behind "Success for successful and fail for failures" trap.

Thus, creating successful enterprise is not only about good old balancing feedback loop. It is always a lot about reinforcing feedback loop behind it.

Wonderful book on this:

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

See it on Goodreads







Links:

• http://www.systems-thinking.org/theWay/sre/re.htm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdGxIameiM8

AI as a new atomic bomb: the weapon of future

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an atomic bomb of future. The one who owns it - rules the everything. Companies that work to create AI become a rival to the countries that own everything, including atomic bombs.

While some countries fight to have own atomic bombs (Iran?) and others try to threat others with their own bombs (Russia?), they seem like outdated countries that live in the past. The future is not in atomic bombs, the future is in intelligence that could control them. Intelligence that could create new technologies, new approaches, new weapon and new future is much more important, much more strong than "some" bombs.

You cannot fight someone who is smarter, sees and knows more than you. You cannot win when all your steps already pre-calculated, and you play in someone else game.

However, there are still some large gap between current state of technologies and real AI. It seems we are not able to scale existing technologies enough to produce superhuman intelligence. Not clear if existing algorithms and approaches are able to be scale to that level though.

How I lost 60 pounds in 3 months

November 30th, 2013. I went for my first time in recent years to the gym. Simple goal - get rid of extra weight. And I was way overweight - 230 lbs with a height of 5'10". Exactly, 3 months later, my weight was 174 lbs, ie 56 lbs less, and another 20 days and my weight was 167 lbs.

Some days, I was loosing 0.5 pound per day, other days only a small amount, but most of the days I woke up lighter and lighter. With weight decreasing, I got energy increasing. Although, I was eating less, I was moving more, and feeling more energized. But not always. Sometimes, I felt really exhausted, I couldn't work more than 7-8 hrs per day. I couldn't allow myself to skip a lunch, otherwise I became aggravated and felt bad and angry.

One way or another, 1 year after, my weight is 172 lbs and I feel myself best ever.

Onion Routing

I've being interested in how Tor is working for a long time already. So just recently got to the reading more about it and especially about the technique that is a heart of Tor. This technique is called Onion Routing and this random-random-note (RRN) is about it.

Before, I quite couldn't understand how anonymity could be reached in the modern networks. However, onion routing is actually quite simple but powerful way to do that. All genius is simple!