I was not planning to post three posts a day on this blog and I will definetly not do so in the future unless they invent some great side-effect free drug that allows me to stay up 24 hours and have a long and happy life anyway. But I have time and a cola at the small restaurant just across the street (coffee was sold out?!) and a computer so why not.
This is a happy-mood post, because something unexpected occured to me at the company today.

I wish I had started this blog earlier, just about the time I got to Japan (which was about two months ago by the way), so I could tell you about the problems and struggles I had in the beginning in a fashion more close to real-time. So let me just sum up two months in one sentence : It was difficult because I did not understand ANY Japanese and my co-workers kinda struggled with English, it was difficult because the tasks I have been given were Windows-programming tasks, something I have never done before due to lack of interest, forcing me to learn everything Visual C++ almost from ground up (it is overwhelming at first) and finally, it was difficult because I had a hard time getting in touch with my co-workers which is related to the first part of the sentence.

Alright, having this said, let me mention another thing. I have met a guy here, he actually works for a big German car manufacturer (he is from Bulgaria if I am not mistaken though) and now he’s on a trip to Japan to learn about Japanese work methods and report about them when he gets back. He works for Toyota while being here, which is a big player when it comes to economical importance for the whole Aichi area (and probably Japan as a whole). Now I have met him twice and each time he was complaining.

While he was very impressed by Japanese working methods, shaking his head when I asked if they can be applied in Germany, too, he was disappointed about this country. I will not go into detail about his complaints regarding food and women, partly because I think it is off subject and partly because I think both are excellent in Japan, but he said something that made me think for a while. “You can work here for 10 years before you can expect anyone to put a hand on your shoulder and say ‘Well done’.”

I took that for an explanation for my impression that people do not look very happy while at work here. Well, not all do, but sometimes I think : “Gosh, that guy must hate his job.”

Anyway, and this brings me finally to the point of this post, today I showed a demo of my work-in-progress application to my department manager, and he actually congratulated me for doing such a quick and good job. I did not know what to say, so I just said “Thank You” and had a good rest of the day. I hope he really meant it (especially when it comes to this pesky Windows coding, I seriously question my abilities) but even if not, if I was a manager I would do what he did just more often, because happy employees are motivated employees. No one will seriously question this.

Okay, that’s it, but before I flip the display of my computer shut causing it to go into good night mode, I want to say something about programming Windows applications.

Bill Gates must be a marketing Genius. Or whoever is responsible for the fact that Windows is the most widely used Operating System. Because it just CANNOT be for technical reasons.

Maybe I am a crappy Windows programmer, maybe I am not objective here at all, but programming Automation for Excel (to give one example) was just painful. Browsing the MSDN to find information about Excel 2000 automation seriously - seriously - almost made me cry. MSDN is such a mess. Example : IF you describe a function that takes a struct for an argument, why don’t you link to that struct instead of having the user taking the detour via the (crappy) MSDN-search function? Why do you change so much stuff between program versions? What is the benefit of renaming a function called get_Property(…) to GetProperty(…) forcing coders like myself having to deal with it? Again, it is VERY badly documented. I could go on for hours. Actually I just have to open my drawer at work and look at the papers I have filled with my pencil while trial-and-error probing stuff that SHOULD be documented. So again, why is Windows so popular?

Okay, thats it. Now I will finish my delicious cola and go home. I had a good day.