Software Engineering

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

- Albert Einstein

Writing software is a messy business - You are tasked with coming up with a solution that works. This is probably best exemplified by the Netflix Prize competition (see wikipedia article for a quick overview if you have not heard of it before).

One consensus I got at KDD Cup 2007 was a slight disappointment at the "hackish" nature of the leading team, which later won the 2007 progress prize. Their winning solution is described here.

It is easy to have bloat creep into code as bugs are fixed and features are added.

One positive plus of working in Google is the inclination to frown on code bloat, and engineers are recognized for coming up with simpler implementations. This philosophy of constant iteration of software engineering ensures that systems are capable of keeping up with features while being maintainable. (Unit testing is HUGE here too)

MOM

Doing a Google search on "mom" shows how overloaded the term is. Poor mothers... Not getting the mindshare of searches all over the world.

And of course, again we see evidence of Singaporeans' love for acronyms as Ministry of Manpower [mom.gov.sg] is such a high-ranking result.

Singapore finding unknown unknown threats

Interesting nugget - Larry Brilliant's won the TED prize in 2006 and his TED wish was to create a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread. See video [ted.com].

Singapore's version - RAHS (Seriously, do we need to make Risk Assesment And Horizon Scanning an acronym?). If only we could have used it to find, oh I don't know, missing terrorists or recalcitrant political activists. :)

Pseudo Nasi Lemak

If Nasi Lemak don't come to Yew Jin, Yew Jin will cook some pseudo Nasi Lemak. Our first attempt.