Embrace the Suck

Another conference, another multiday sleep deprivation experience. It is true, it is a barely acceptable excuse, it is all I have:  I am tired, and a tired geek is a tardy one.  Sorry, but thems the breaks.

In my defense, I suspect everyone else is as well.  Why?  One is Yr. Obt. Svt.’s inability to turn himself off when finally in bed – minor insomnia — some of it is too many attempts to get the most out of a conference especially a geek one.  I’m with my tribe and it is just simply fun.  So basically, it’s my fault, but here we Lucky Few are.  If you are an unfortunate reader of this blog, and you haven’t thought about Wave, you should, you really should.

Inadequate excuses aside, herein are yesterday’s highlights.

Oh Yes, Don’t Forget the Safe Harbor Statement

Remember, if what you see doesn’t happen (or maybe does), or if it makes your life easier, or sets your OneStream server literally on fire, it’s not OneStream’s fault.

Development and Devs and Workspaces

Is OneStream an Object Oriented Programming language and are we OneStream practitioners writing code?  Yup.  And the developer experience is improving to reflect that.

Workspaces

Workspaces are here and they are – finally – a way to segregate development effort within an application.  There are many nuances, but a simple (really simple) metaphor is an OS (operating system) file structure that allows one to have two Word files named, “Wave 2023, Day 1, Also a Day Late.docx” in two separate folders.  What this means to OS (OneStream this time), is one can have a button named btn_ClickMeForAwesomeness more than once.  This makes parallel development much easier.

But object naming is just a wee bit of the promise.  OneStream is moving all (well, not yet, but it’s coming and quite a bit of them) of the artefacts used in development into separate Workspaces to fully contain all of the bits and bobs that is a OneStream app.

Folders?  Yes.

You Want Code?  We Have Code

This is what makes Wave special.  Practical examples and we’re-not-afraid-to-strut-our stuff. 

I will also note Hungarian notation (ahem, dear colleagues who think it is utter garbage, please note that the vendor uses this standard) and camel case usage.  It warmed the very cockles of my heart to see OneStream use these naming convents.

Mini rant, and surprisingly likely the only one in this post: x = sales could be a decimal assignment, object assignment, who knows what kind of assignment.  sales was valued 500 or more lines ago, I’m the poor consultant who has to figure it out, and my life sucks.  As I am not omniscient, X (is) the Unknown, so my life sucks even more.  In contrast, dim decSalesRestated as Decimal = decSales gives me an awfully good idea of what decSales is (hint, it’s a decimal) and I’ll know in just a wee bit after I perform whatever OneStream magic one might hope for just what decSalesRestated is.  I’ll not touch on the likely implicit typing that declared and valued x those 500 lines ago; Version 8 requires explicit typing.  I’ve done all of this for eons and it is beyond gratifying to see that I finally stumbled into a good practice.  Finally.  

Context?  Use cases?  Of course.

Direct actionable technical knowledge? 

Yes.

Here’s Chris Barbieri waiting for the next session to begin:

Will I ever write performant code?  Maybe after this session?  Maybe.  This session, and particularly tomorrow’s (I am writing yesterday’s review today, today’s will be tomorrow, posting happens a few days later, whew) session Advanced Solution Engineering Concepts are top drawer stuff.

There’s Always a Party

Conferences seemingly always have a party on the penultimate day.  This year’s was at Hollywood Studio’s Galaxy’s Edge which somewhat confusingly led off with a pretty good Indiana Jones vignette with Tom Shea as Dr. Jones complete with snakes, fire, punji sticks, axes, and a truly huge temple ball and oh yes a bullwhip.  Would it have been nice to have recorded some of this to show you?  Wouldn’t it?  Probably.  Sorry, I can’t film everything and I, erm, was having too good of a time watching it.  Sorry if that sounds as if I’m lording it over you, but this is another reason you should come to Wave next year.

On the way to the bus:

About to watch the Indy skit I so cruelly teased you with:

Stormtroopers:

The Millenium Falcon:

I enjoyed it more than I would have thought (I am not an amusement park kind of guy), particularly when everyone knows that the last real Star Wars movie came out in 1983 and so much of the park comes from the later movies.

Just the One More

I think my evening ended at 12:30-ish am which is quite a bit past my bedtime.  Would that I could have slept once I crawled back to my room.  I simply cannot quickly turn my mind off on a whim.  Today (yesterday) I got almost five hours sleep so it’s an improvement over Monday night.

The last day (today) has some of Wave’s best content and I’ll combine that with my thoughts on Wave 2023 and hopes for Wave 2024 in the next post.

Be seeing you.