cokorda raka's core competencies

8/7/2019 Cokorda Raka's Core Competencies

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Cokorda Raka Angga Jananuraga's Core CompetenciesAtlixco 105-302Col. Condesa, Del. Cuauhtmoc, Mxico, D.F.55-3663-2011 (mobile) & 55-5212-1582 (home)[email protected]

http://jananuraga.blogspot.comhttp://tinyurl.com/resumeraka

Analytical Thinker

I consider myself an analytical thinker and always try to get to the core of the problems. Iconsider it is more effective and less costly (in the long run) if we fix the root of the problem,instead of trying to deal only with its symptoms. I'm fully aware that my career choicedemands analytical thinking, therefore I consciously try to hone that particular skill / traitevery step of the way.

I have always been curious about how to design and implement software such that it isstructurally and logically sounds. I found it more satisfying if I also have firm grasp on thecontext and the use of the software I'm developing. This led me to getting myself familiarwith concepts such as domain-driven design. I am convinced that neglecting the aspect ofmaking the design communicable leads to a software that has a poor abstraction anddisconnected from the reality it is supposed to model.

Working for Microsoft in Shanghai during 2007 convinces me even more of the importance ofanalytical thinking. The task designing, implementing, executing test-cases, and analyzingproblems for the software developed by Microsoft demands that one investigates variousaspects of the software in detail, from the ways it is supposed to be used, the ways it can be

misused, its design, etc., all to identify ways to break it.

I found software testing work fascinating, and I believe the drill of the work made me see theframework for analytical thinking. Designing test plan and test cases for software requiresstructured thinking, in order to increase the probability that the tests cover as much area aspossible in the software, in less time.

This has been very useful in my later career, including the current one where there's a strongemphasis on safety, thus risk analysis is formalized in the process.

Solution-oriented Creativity

I read it somewhere, years ago, that good programmers are lazy programmers (but not theother way around). I take that philosophy to the heart. What I understand from theexpression is that good programmers tend to look for ways to get more jobs done faster, withless or diminishing effort (that's the laziness). Consequently, good programmers have to becreative; a solution-oriented, practical, creativity.

One of the occasions I put that principle into practice is when I was working in animplementation of rating & billing project in Nextel Mexico, where I had to examine a largeset of data in the rating & billing system, in order to detect problem / potential problem.


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Many of the issues had to do with inconsistency in the database. The challenge: the databasecontains hundreds of tables. At first I did the checking manually. However, as soon as I haveidentified the pattern, it occurred to me that significant part of the task can be done moreefficiently with a program. So I wrote the tool (later published in http://tinyurl.com/rakadb),which is basically a tool that lets one to define a subset of inter-related tables from which the

data will have to be extracted (for further analysis).

As another example, during the project in Baktun where, in order to be able to buildsimulators for doing some tests, we had to understand the communication mechanismbetween elements of a proprietary web-conference system that belongs to the client(InterCall). I decompiled the relevant parts of the system, identified the places in the codewhere data is sent / received from the network, print out the data, and tabulate them in aspreadsheet document where the action of application users is mapped with the data. Basedon that document, and additional analysis, we successfully built the simulators.

On top of that, I developed a tool that allows us to automatize some scenarios involvingcommunication between the simulator and some server-side components of the web-conference system. The tool helped us reduce dependency to experienced programmers forwriting test-scenarios in a format that can be executed directly by computers. The tool islater published in http://tinyurl.com/rakatest .

In my current work I had to make a high-resolution web-camera from Microsoft to work on aplatform (operating system) for which the camera was not specifically designed. Thereforethere was a problem to get the camera working for that platform. In theory, however, thecamera is supposed to work on that platform. It's just that Microsoft didn't make itparticularly easy to do so. After goggling for a couple of days, I managed to get the camera

working, using some techniques that I'm sharing here: http://tinyurl.com/rakawinembed

Finally, also in my current work, we have to devise a new design for the software of amedical-device that was written several years ago by another team of programmers, withoutany trace of documentation. We have to reverse engineer the software, to begin with. That, Ithink, involves some creativity and analytical thinking that manifest especially in the way weeffectively debug the software and walk through the source code. Through proper andefficient debugging, we can see how the state of the application changes based on certaininput or condition. We then make some educated guesses, and confirms in one way oranother before reaching a conclusion.

Focused on Business Objectives & Commitment to Deliverables

I am very goal oriented and always strive not to miss the commitments I made on thedeliverables. I learned that when the business objectives and my own (professional andpersonal wise) are in tune, I found myself generating more energy for the accomplishment ofthe work objectives. That, I think, has to do with time.

I'm comfortable with the working environment where I can have a certain level of flexibilityover the way I manage my time, all the way throughout the accomplishment of the
http://tinyurl.com/rakadbhttp://tinyurl.com/rakatesthttp://tinyurl.com/rakawinembedhttp://tinyurl.com/rakatesthttp://tinyurl.com/rakawinembedhttp://tinyurl.com/rakadb


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from the publication: helping a young programmer in Africa getting in touch withtelephony application development, helping a VoIP company in Portugal preparing theircandidates, helping a professor in Greece for his classes, and so on. The followingcomment was received from my tutor on technical-writing course I took when I wasvisiting Microsoft HQ in Redmond in 2007:

5. Video series I wrote in 2008, consolidating the knowledge and skill I acquired up

to that point in development ofIP Multimedia Subsystemusing VoIP protocol namedSession Initiation Protocol(SIP). This video series also have received great response from

audience around the world, as can be observed on the blog where I published it :http://tinyurl.com/rakaims
http://tinyurl.com/rakaimshttp://tinyurl.com/rakaims


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cokorda raka's core competencies

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