I’ve have a lot of wonderful support in my career and I’ve been reflecting on how to give back to others in the industry. \u00a0One of the hardest parts of giving back is the long cycle to tell that its working. \u00a0After all, when you are coding in an IDE, feedback is nearly instantaneous. \u00a0But depending on how you are helping people, it may take weeks, months, or even a decade to see the payoff. \u00a0So how does one get started?<\/p>\n
I specifically reflected on two instances where\u00a0Stacy Joines<\/a>\u00a0helped me, one with a five-year payoff and one with a ten-year payoff. \u00a0It’s worth pointing out that neither was a one-on-one interaction and that I didn’t actually meet Stacy until after these instances paid off.<\/p>\n The first instance was in the third\u00a0year of my career. \u00a0I crossed paths with\u00a0Ruth Willenborg<\/a>\u00a0who had an interesting email tagline: “Have you read Performance Analysis for Java Websites yet?”\u00a0I was writing some Java-based installation code for an obscure IBM product and did not feel challenged in my career. \u00a0I decided that reading\u00a0Performance Analysis for Java Websites<\/a>\u00a0(by Stacy Joines, Ruth Willenborg, and Ken Hygh) would be a good learning opportunity.<\/p>\n I read the book cover-to-cover and learned just how much I had to learn about Java, and about building, testing, and analyzing code. \u00a0I went out and ordered additional books on Java and worked myself through a series of Java certifications, from Sun Certified Java Developer to Sun Certified Java Architect. \u00a0I dug into JUnit and Test-Driven Development and applied it everywhere. \u00a0The development and testing processes I learned from all these books improved my software so much, it hardly seemed fair.<\/p>\n This journey took about five years, starting from the moment I read Ruth’s tagline. \u00a0In order to give back in a similar manner, I have written up my own lessons about testing, this time about how to test cognitive systems: \u00a0Cognitive System Testing From A to Z<\/a>.<\/p>\n The second long-incubating advice I received was also early in my career. \u00a0Stacy Joines was talking to a packed IBM cafeteria about the importance of patenting, to protect the intellectual property we develop every day. \u00a0She described what it takes to create a patent (in short, write-up something that is novel, useful, valuable, and implementable) and she encouraged us that we each had what it took to create patents for our work.<\/p>\n