The 4 Types of Emails Programmers Receive

The 4 Types of Emails Programmers Receive

 

The Vague Email

Feature XYZ isn’t working. Please fix.

Provides next to no information other than at some point, a feature — possibly XYZ — didn’t function the way a specific user expected it to. Issue could be anything ranging from a catastrophic system failure to a simple misunderstanding on the part of the user. Usually requires a series of follow-up emails, phone calls, and conferences in order to clarify the problem at hand.

 

The End of the World Email

URGENT!!! System is down! NONE of our users can do XYZ! Please advise!!!11!

Usually flagged as important in Outlook and CC’ed to everyone in the user’s contact list. Grossly overstates the magnitude of the problem either to guarantee an expedited fix or simply because the user would rather yell at someone rather than bother checking. Rarely turns out to be as terrible as originally advertised. Unfortunately, that still won’t save you from having to put out all the fires the email started.

 

The Red Herring Email

Can you check if XYZ is working?

Actual problem winds up being completely unrelated to XYZ. Unfortunately, you won’t find that out until after you’ve spent several hours poring over code trying to envision the perfect storm of events that would have triggered a failure in XYZ.

 

The Ideal Email

When I do XYZ, ABC happens. I expected DEF to happen instead. Here are some screenshots showing what happened.

Clear, concise, and doesn’t make any assumptions about the issue at hand. Gives enough information for a programmer to at least approach the problem and is oftentimes sufficient without any additional follow-up. These are rare and far between, yet the amount of effort to type them up isn’t much more than any of the three other types of emails. Wouldn’t life be a lot simpler if all emails came in this format?


For more refer to this good article. I loved it..

Practical steps towards a greener, energy-efficient cloud

Official Google Blog: Practical steps towards a greener, energy-efficien...: "(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog ) Update June 14, 9:14am: Videos of all the presentations at the Data Center Summit are now available on our website.

Data centers are very important to us—they’re critical to the cloud services we deliver. Over the last 12 years, we’ve put a lot of effort into minimizing the amount of energy, water and other resources we use—because it makes financial sense, and because it’s good for the environment too. That work means that today, we use half the energy of a typical industry data center. ..."

Here Google talks about the data-centers and how to work and operate them efficiently, thus saving electricity and making data-centers environment friendly. A must read.

Apple iCloud - Cloud Computing in Action

Now Apple too is on the Cloud ! Apple has launched its own Cloud Computing offering - iCloud. It is a set of cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content and push it to all your devices. And the great news is that it is FREE. iCloud services include new versions of Contact, Calendar, and Mail; iCloud Backup and Storage; Photo Stream; and iTunes in the Cloud. And for just $24.99 a year, iTunes Match will give you all of the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes.

For more on it read at official iCloud site.