Nested Table Component for Blackberry

Based on our last Simple Table component, I have put together a Nested Table as well. The main features are:

-Each row can be rendered like an irregular table
-Each row is backed by an object
-Possibility to add a popup to row click

These classes demonstrate how to use the component:
SampleApplication.java
SampleRowBackingBean.java
SampleBean.java

You would need the following classes to make this work:
BNestedTable.java
BMultiRowBackingBean.java
BGenericTableCallback.java
BAbstractRowRenderer
BNestedRowRenderer.java
BSimplePopupScreen.java
FieldCreatorUtility.java
UiProperties.java

Possible improvements:
-implementing varying row heights
-implement table header, table footer and column header

A Simple Table Component for Blackberry

Just worked on making a J2ME based prototype for a Blackberry (JDE 4.7+). The documentation, the website and the API are horrible, to say the least. We are using the Eclipse Plugin for development. One of the prime difficulties we faced was the absence of a well-defined table component. "ListField" is horribly designed and the example that is given in their documentation does needs serious improvement. Moreover, to make a flexible component that renders a list of messages (like the SMS message list) with each composite row selectable as a whole, no example could really help. So, I have made two components that you can improve upon and use as you please.

The first one, that is given in this post, is a simple table. It takes a 2-D array of fields and converts it into a visual table. It simply improves upon ListField. You would need the following three classes:

BSimpleTable.java
BSimpleTableCallback.java
BSimpleRowRenderer.java

Then in you code, use a similar code snippet to make and add a table (here we use it to create the title of the screen):

Field[][] titleContent = new Field[1][];
titleContent[0] = new Field[3];
titleContent[0][0] = new LabelField("S.No.",
  DrawStyle.ELLIPSIS);
titleContent[0][1] = new LabelField("Message",
  DrawStyle.ELLIPSIS);
titleContent[0][2] = new LabelField("Time",
  DrawStyle.ELLIPSIS);
int[] widthPercent = {10,63,27};
int[] paddings = { 5, 0, 0 };
setTitle(new BSimpleTable(titleContent,
  widthPercent, paddings, 
  Field.NON_FOCUSABLE));

If you don't want to sign the application, hard code the total screen width instead of using Display.getWidth()

Also, see: Version Specific Developmnet Guides (3.6 to 5.0 beta)

Marketing Triumphs Technology?

I have heard quite a few business leaders implying that marketing always triumphs technology. I do not dispute the importance of marketing. Nevertheless, working in technology business myself, I have no doubts that in the long-run technology is as important as marketing. Putting one above the other is to disparage one at the cost of other.

It is possible to use logic to exhalt any department. For example, the Business Development department can as easily assert that it is the sales force that gets in the money and is truly in touch with the truths at the ground level, unlike marketing managers that make a sweet sounding theoretical plans in their ivory towers. Technology, Marketing and Sales have their own place in the company structure. Comparing one with the other is absurd, unwarranted and potentially destructive.

Many technology guys are more interested in developing and creating. Innovation cannot come to them easily unless they are given a chance to interact with customers and involved with the business side of things. Barricading engineers & scientists in laboratories and complaining about lack of innovation is ironic, to say the least. Without customer interaction innovation is difficult to achieve. Marketing itself can be highly destructive if it operates in isolation from the customer. Sales without customer focus will kill the product eventually. Some people talk of innovation as if it is a commodity or a God given gift. My experience tells me that innovation is a result of closeness to customer and willingness to experiment.

Innovation may not be about wearing white coats, but it is not about wearing a tie and a suit (with a marketing hat) either. Innovation is an attitude born out of a company's culture and its people. Period.

Speeding Up Technology: Thinking People

In the previous two articles I have talked about the need for a vision with an ambition and the need to cultivate leaders. I have talked about the importance of policy. It, however, strikes me that who will make policy? Policy is the product created by people. So we have read about the importance of hiring the right people. But who will hire the right people? Only somebody who believes in it as a concept and is willing to implement it in practice. Moreover, it does not end here and the company needs to be ready with at least ambition-vision + cultivate leadership mindset so as it can make full use of the right people and retain them. Bottom-up changes are generally painful and often viewed with suspicion by almost everybody at top. Top-down changes without getting people involved are viewed similarly by people who are not party to it. The next pre-requisite, then, is a lot of communication and flexibility within the limits of the clearly defined vision/ policy.

The organization is defined by its people. Nevertheless, people cannot operate in a vacuum. Having a leader that nurtures such people and inculcates a sense of pride and ownership in them without duping them is a rarity, and can be a supremely powerful force in the growth of a company.

What has to be remembered, though, is that no policy, no vision can be immutable. If there is one certainty in this universe, it is change. More so in the technical world. The playing field can change completely in few years at best and few months at worse, such is the speed of change. The only defence can be having the right people and cultivating in them a spirit of learning and leadership. I would call it a "nursery" of leaders, hiring brilliant people and preparing them to rise

Speeding Up Technology: Cultivating Leaders

Most people understand leadership as power and/or authority and there is a lot of talk about the "strength" and "vision" of a leader. However, it is easy to mistake bullying & stubbornness for strength and demagogy & rhetoric for vision. The difference is too subtle and short-term results too similar to cause any alarm.

The generally accepted way to make a new product at greatest speed is to place some brilliant developers under an able Senior Manager or Product Architect. Now, it can take two directions from this basic set up. One way is that the manager just focuses on the current product and executes the project in the style of "Command and Conquer" by making things simpler for his team and spelling out clear instructions to execute the project. If the team struggles, he dives right in and leads from the front ensuring the correct course for the ship. All sailors learn a lot by seeing the able captain in action and there is tremendous growth. He can encourage his sailors to learn and grow.

All is happy in the world till the point, till one of the sailor learns enough to attempt to captain the ship, perhaps a smaller ship. The captain may view it as abject desertion or, worse, covert mutiny. Or he may provide the testing ground for the willing sailor as he knows that the company will eventually have many ships and he cannot steer all of them alone. In this context, the vision and growth strategy of company assumes paramount importance. If there is no growth potential, it will definitely be either desertion or mutiny (with accompanying unpleasantness). Else the business will gain another leader and grow.

This also makes further demand on the captain to actively recognize, cultivate and have an outlet for promising young sailors. Else he should hire sailors who do not harbour such ambitions and are happy sticking their nose only to their immediate work. Since no company can provide an unlimited supply of opportunities, one has to be ready to let go of talented people if they cannot neither find optimum use of the same nor think of ways to cultivate them further.

A company trusts only the best to build the nuts and bolts of their product. If it cannot make a strategy to retain them, it is a shame. This can not only lead to loss of talent but can also disrupt progress of the product due to loss of expertise and problems associated with hiring. Hence, it is in the best interest of the project to give a thought about this before starting. Here, as I said, the vision and policy of a company may be the ultimate deciding factor. At least in the initial life of a company, an entrepreneurial team that generates more entrepreneurial teams can be a powerhouse of growth and innovation. That it will affect speed positively over the long run is but one of the many side-effects of a well-thought and flexible company policy.

Speeding Up Technology: Ambition with Vision

Till this point we talked only about technology and its impact on the project without taking into account the manager, the leadership and the company. These elements bring in the human element and its pitfalls to the job. For this one reason, I feel behaviour sciences need to be explored more not only wrt economics but practically all domains of management. My articles do not claim to be any authority but reflect my point of view developed by working, reading and observing.

In our first article we talked that from managerial point of view, the main stumbling blocks can be:

• poor choice of technology
• poor choice of development methodology
• lack of focus on long-term vision with complete focus on speed

We shall explore them. But even before that, a lot depends on the company vision and the corresponding leadership policy.

Company vision defines the existence of a corporation. Why does the corporation exist in the first place? How ambitious and flexible is it towards growth? I have seen a lot of family and privately owned businesses stagnating as their sole purpose is to earn money for its owners, as a stable source of income or to do some limited good work in its sphere. There are yet others that come up due to the Government's policy changes and new legislation or those that manage to entrench themselves in a monopolistic niche. One thing strikingly common is that many of these ventures aim to neither be the "best" nor have a long term growth plan. There is no vision to the ambition. In Jim Collins words, these are companies who have figured out a way to be good but have not thought of being great by choice or chance. In cases when they do, some truly amazing companies or professions result from that.

The problems, to name a few, that arise from company's lack of vision for its growth are as follows:

• A small company does not have any use for too many leaders. This would generally translate into a senior rung of management with a big vacuum beneath. This can blow in the company's face in time
• Lack of growth will ultimately frustrate ambitious & able executives and employees alike, who may ultimately leave for better avenues. This is especially true for the Sales force
• A "family" atmosphere and nepotism can take roots more easily in a family run enterprise, seriously affecting the company's long-term future
• Ultimately competition will come calling, and if they are growth oriented, it will prove disastrous for the parent company

Having said that, there are some advantages to be had by working for a small company in its setting up phase:

• it will give you the opportunity to interact with and witness all aspects of business. This may prove critical in your growth as a leader who has a strong general awareness
• you get to see the whole product development lifecycle very closely, again adding to your leadership potential
• if (a big if) you can affect the company to make the leap and it succeeds, the dividends are yours to have
• in the initial growth phase learning is very profound and comprehensive due to the chaos associated with starting a venture, these things may be hard to learn in any big company and will serve you well when you want to do something on your own

Summarizing, in general limiting of vision ultimately reduces the company's efficiency and affects its supply of leaders. This is true at least for the technology industry where change is too rapid for comfort of the conservative. Ambition with vision can be the currency of speed. If your employees know that they are not a "cog in the wheel" but are actually contributing to something important that will affect at least their lives positively, it will help to speed up work and check attrition. A good work-life balance, an understanding manager, "just" compensations and good employees facilities can be the icing on the cake, but it is not the cake that can satiate the hunger. I feel that nothing can replace the electric, palpitating combination of vision and ambition.

Speeding Up Technology: Testing

Nothing can replace good development, and a good unit testing is a part of good development. I will not go as far as recommending hardcore test-driven development, but robust unit testing never hurts.

Pre-JUnit, having a "main" method in every Java class to be tested was the way I went about testing. In came web applications and testing this way suddenly felt difficult. Then a combination of JUnit, JMock and Spring enabled me to test my code more meaningfully. For multi-threaded systems where even debugging into the running code is virtually impossible and Unit testing can help only so much, intelligent use of logging can help a lot to both verify functionality and spot potential bugs.

Change is our constant friend, and unit tests enable your team to keep track of their key assumptions and all the parts of the code affected by any change in the code. Barring this, the team will inevitably waste time due to avoidable, simple bugs. This makes more sense as a company cannot be sure about who will change the code in future. Documentation, code-comments and well-written code can help a new developer to understand many things, but none of them can replace well-thought unit tests that capture the essential purpose, assumptions and functionality of the class in a very practical way. It also helps the developer to think about his code more deliberately and deeply. Overall, this adds to efficiency gains in terms of product development speed and code quality.