Series 2 Introduction - Electrotest

The Soul of an Internet Machine

My colleague Stephanie, or Stevie, and I have working together for over six years. We’ve written commercial software that has managed billions in U.S. federal government funds. We’ve written software that helps an airline inspect their ramp operations. In the past, I worked on a team that use software to catch bad guys. The Electrotest project started in December of 2021. The audience for this podcast includes business folks who must manage data, manage software, or manage software development. Additionally, the audience includes technical folk interested in Oracle database application development.

I blend story-based narrative with some technology and real-world business examples.

We learned of the project during the fall of 2021 as negotiations became an open secret within our team. I designated 06 DEC 2021 as the official start of the project. Reviewing my email one year later, I see that through the middle part of December of 2021, we were transitioning from one European-based client to this new client in Belgium. On 22 December 2021, I have an email with the subject line: een paar issues meaning “a few issues”.

We spent most of that month finding our footing. We set up the tools needed to share code via GitHub. We established our management process with tickets and workflows. In our first European/Belgium project, we were late to the team. We came in with specific expertise. We communicated only with the existing development team who were located in Slovenia and Belgium. We never met the client. Lovely project. We came in as the “pros from Dover”.

Through this podcast, I intend to illustrate that:

• Writing code is writing.
• Writing code is elegant.
• Writing code is story telling.
• Beautifully written code is beautiful.
• Well written code follows a streamline, logical, precise process called thinking.

My father, a novelist, once said: “Writing well requires thinking well”. My corollary to that statement is that: “Good code requires good thinking”. No one can write good code without clarity.

I derive the same satisfaction from writing code as I do from writing stories. That thought; that vision; that story; that process in my brain needs to be communicated to another. That thought needs to be understood by another. That thought, when communicated, must be logical. My friend and colleague in Belgium seduced me by stating that this project is ours. We will start from scratch, from a white piece of blank paper, from an empty database, from a green field that has never been turned. The statement proved to be a little wrong. Who cares, he proved himself to be mostly correct. Yay!

We are a couple of North American programmers based on the East Coast. I am in New England. Stevie is in Virginia. Eli, whom you’ll meet later in the series, lives now in Washington State. Our client and project manager live in Belgium. We got hired for this job precisely because we are experts in back-office functions such as invoicing, regulatory affairs, document management and all of the boring things that keeps our global economy rolling along.

Our client is a Belgium firm called Electrotest. This company inspects industrial and residential properties focusing on regulatory compliance and health/safety concerns. These are the guys who inspect lifts/elevators and cranes and smoke detection systems and fuel/petrol stations. If there exists a nexus between safety, health, and human occupation, then Electrotest is likely to inspect it. In some cases, the inspections fall within governmental guidelines. In some cases, the inspections are required by the domestic gas companies of Belgium. In some cases, they provide the home or electrical inspections related to new construction or home sales.

For listeners in the United States, this process does relate. Nearly all of us have stood in a hotel lift/elevator reading the safety certificate. In the U.S., this certificate tends to be issued by a municipal or local government official. Following new construction or remodeling of a home or office, a local government official tends to inspect and certify plumbing, electrical systems, fire prevent/fire detection systems. In the U.S. these processes are fragmented by municipal, state, and federal regulations. The Kingdom of Belgium has a population of more than 11.5 million people. The New York City metropolitan area has 20 million residents. New York City metropolitan area is about half the size of Belgium at 12000 square kilometers. Belgium is about 30000 square kilometers. The central government of Belgium seems both a bit more centralized than the US, but also complicated by having multiple cultural and language borders which sometimes have their own regulatory scope. For example, rules in Flanders may differ from Wallonia.

Seriously, who wants simple?

Writing software for Electrotest to perform and report on their inspections is a bit simpler because of the stronger and centralized nature of these health and safety regulations. In my rural Vermont town where we trade eggs for homemade bacon and hang hams in the basement, I do my own electrical work. I’ve redone most of the plumbing in this house. We don’t do inspections here. There are no inspectors. It simply isn’t a thing. But a few kilometers over the line into Massachusetts, the process follows different rules because it is a different state. And we have fifty-four or fifty-five states (or state-like entities). I know, our flag only has 50 stars. There are 4 million American citizen in Puerto Rico who have no rights to vote in our national election, get no representation in our Congress, have no star on our flag, etc. We exceed others with our inconsistencies and shenanigans.

From their offices near Brussels, Electrotest is able to provide inspection services to individuals (particularen) and corporations throughout Belgium.

What does Electrotest need?

Bluntly, they need everything we can offer. Their staff appear excellent at their duties. Before we met them, they generated nearly 50,000 invoices per year by hand using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets. I will say this often during the 2023 series of “The Soul of an Internet Machine”, Excel is the world’s worst database. In fact, it is not a database. Oh, go argue with me. Blah, blah, you can query from column and select stuff, blah, blah. Go ahead, I’ll ignore you. Databases are relational and robust. Database use internal rules to maintain data integrity. Databases manage large, robust, complex data with grace and ease (if you have developers like us who make it graceful and easy). I shall not dive deeper in to their manual and internal system. They made the decision to modernize. We praise that decision. To their credit, they have tried numerous systems both commercial and custom over the years to make some improvements.

Can we automate systems for invoicing and save them money? How do we do that? Is money leaking out of their manual processes? Are they or were they losing money due to process management?

• Can we automate processes for pricing?
• Can we automate the processes needed for taking a service order?
• Can we automate and standardize the process of generating inspection reports?

The first time I saw the CEO of Electrotest get quoted in the press for her endeavors she did not focus on the financial gains. Instead, she revealed several specific climate goals for the software. I never once thought that back-office automation of a national company could or would have a positive impact on climate policies. She made the connection.

In an early release, St...