The Most Useful Dialog I've Ever Built

For many years, I've been lucky to work on some very cool, interesting, fun, and important projects.  Sometimes, when you are fully immersed in the technology you are building, you don't always see the big picture.  Later on, you might be able to look back and fully grasp what you designed, what you built and how someone might actually do something useful with it.

I thought that my very first project, coming out of college and joining Digital Equipment (DEC), was the coolest thing.  It was called DECplan, a project planning and management system.  Remember Gantt Charts?  Precedence Diagrams?  Project Schedules?   I was tasked with "reports".  That's it.  Build a way for users to get reports out of the system.  I designed and built the Report Layout Editor.  A way to take a blank sheet of paper and customize a report.  Basically, drag database fields onto the page and then "generate" the report.  Looking back, our group built Microsoft Project before there was even a Microsoft.  I had no idea that I built a Microsoft Word like interface with one of the first graphical toolkits in the industry....DECwindows.  Very useful.

Next stop, Wellfleet.  A small networking company that had grand plans of doing big things... and it did.  As it grew, to Bay Networks and eventually Nortel Networks, I was lucky to be on the team that was tasked with managing *ALL* the networking products....routers, switches, hubs, and on.  Our lab was huge, with one of every product in the companies offering.  The interface (now using SUN equipment with Motif) had to show all the different devices, each with unique settings, fields and options, in a generic way that allowed for ease of use.  This was a challenge and a success as it did display all the equipment it discovered in a single cohesive view.  Very useful.

Virtualization was born.  An industry that has spawned numerous companies and has provided thousands of jobs to this day.  Now using Java and Swing and being able to really build not only a useful application, but something that was pleasing to use and visually intriguing, was the next challenge.  I was lucky again, to land in the fast paced startup world in the middle of an emerging technology company, Virtual Iron.  Design and build an application for managing virtual machines.  Show me what's running, allow me to rollout new machines quickly and put it all at my finger tips.  Very useful.

Along came SDN.  To be fair, SDN occurred a few years after I had already started at my next lucky stop, Plexxi Inc.  Long before network overlays, SDN, DevOps integration, and all the present day technologies started coming together, Plexxi was already working on it.

Design and build an application that shows me application conversations in my network, lets me put policies on those conversations, automatically adjust my network and show me the results.  Wow.  Of course this would be the most useful application I've ever built.   Then, one day, well into the development of Plexxi Control, the subject of DevOps and troubleshooting and network management came up.  I need to find something in my network, but I don't know much about what I'm looking for.  Maybe I know the IP Address, maybe a name, maybe a type of object, maybe a MAC Address.  Help!

And there it was, "The Most Useful Dialog I've Ever Built."

Can you find this for me?  Do you have this object in your controller database?  What's the name? Do you know the MAC or IP address?  What operations can I do to it?  Which Plexxi Switch sees this object?  What port is it seen on?  Is it on a VLAN? Is it Affinitized? 

It may seem simple, but being able to access and display this kind of information from our central controller helps answer ( in a single press of a "Find" button) a very complex question, that typically involves querying several applications, people, spreadsheets, emails, and all sorts of disorganized network information.  Very very useful.

You Can Go Home Again

Who says you can't go home again?

As a newly graduated computer scientist, my own backyard was full of companies to go to work for - Data General, Wang, DEC, Apollo, and others.  These companies were booming and were gobbling up my classmates.  Living in New Hampshire, I chose DEC and landed at the Spit Brook road facility that included the famous ZK1, ZK2 and ZK3 buildings.

I traveled to California, Vegas, even Valbonne France as Digital grew and grew.  I sat next to seasoned consulting engineers that knew how to build fantastic software.  I learned.  I saw the creation of computer graphics via DECWindows based on the X Windows framework and later to Motif.  I was hooked with UI design.  I originally worked on DECPlan (basically Microsoft Project before there was a Microsoft) and to this day, it had features that no project management system has.

Mid-90's....the downturn starts.  Competition heats up, the PC is born, Wang starts to collapse, DEC has layoffs and salary freezes, change is brewing.  After 10 years, it's time to move on.  There's some new up and coming companies called Cabletron, Wellfleet, Cisco out there that are the next big things.

And so, some 25 years after beginning in ZK3, I have returned to Spit Brook road.  It's no longer one company...the buildings have been updated, carved up to house numerous companies.  I recently took a walk to some of the uninhabited floors and areas.  I found a conference room with some very interesting information printed on the wall:

The list of VMS features spanned from BL5 (which boasted 100 customers) all the way to version 5.0. It was almost eerie.....like the engineers had just packed up and left and now only dust was living here.

The buildings have also undergone some cosmetic changes as well.  All the entrances have been redone, the heated outside tile gone, and a more engineered entrance in place.

The interior hallways have new carpet, and a new paint scheme with more modern lighting.

A piece of DEC history has also been restored.  Many old timers will remember the barcode on the entrance to ZK2, where the main entrance and credit union used to be.  It spelled out Digital  Software Engineering at some point and has long been removed.  But this past summer, this showed up on the cafeteria wall:

With a plaque that reminded everyone of the barcode DEC used to have and that this new barcode, in the spirit of the original one, spells out Nashua Tech Park.

In my travels about the buildings, I found a three ring binder with a Digital logo on it.  I've put some of my Plexxi documents into it.  There's good karma in these buildings.  Maybe the next big thing is coming from this historic location.  You CAN go home again.