Response from Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) on Net Neutrality

I contacted Scott Perry (R-PA), my U.S. Congressman, to encourage him to support net neutrality. Like Pat Toomey (R-PA), my U.S. Senator, he opposes it:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) newly proposed net neutrality rules. I appreciate learning your views on this issue.

I'm committed to doing everything possible to ensure a transparent, accountable, and openly available Internet. In the last year, I voted for Representative Justin Amash's amendment to end NSA mass surveillance (H.Amdt. 413) and supported the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act (H.R. 2061), which requires information on all federal spending to be posted to a comprehensive and searchable website.

As you know, earlier this year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down portions of the FCC's 2010 Open Internet Order, ruling that the agency's rules overstepped its regulatory authority under current law. As a result, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed a new set of net neutrality rules on May 15, 2014. While these rules are not finalized, the FCC is encouraging interested individuals and groups to comment on the proposal, either through the FCC website or by sending an e-mail to openinternet@fcc.gov.

Know that I support a hands-off approach to the Internet. Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, new technologies and advancements in telecommunications have rapidly developed due to the limited government regulation of Internet traffic and services. According to the FCC National Broadband Plan, this unrestricted free market has provided broadband to over 95% of Americans without government intervention or interference. Please know that I will continue to support policies that preserve the Internet's open structure to promote innovation, spur economic growth, and protect the free exchange of ideas.

Once again, thank you for contacting me. I appreciate your concerns and welcome your continued feedback. Please visit my website at perry.house.gov to submit further questions/comments or to sign up for my e-newsletter, Facebook page, and/or Twitter updates.

Scott Perry
Member of Congress

It was rather difficult find Rep. Perry's position on net neutrality. I couldn't find any news articles or press releases, and I never received a response to my emails, tweets, or Facebook messages. I finally called his Washington D.C. office; I spoke with a very polite and helpful staffer, and they sent me the email above.

Whatever your position is on net neutrality, if you are a U.S. citizen, I encourage you to contact your senators and representatives and let them know where you stand. We may not all have the financial resources to compete with large telecoms, but we do still have the votes.

New programming techniques and the productivity curve

Though I love learning new programming techniques and technologies, I often struggle to make them a part of my normal development processes. For example, it took years before I finally started using regular expressions on a normal basis. The reason? The productivity curve:

You may have seen a chart like this before; the productivity curve is used to show one of the challenges of software delivery. The general idea is that when you first use a new product (or technology), your productivity always plummets in the short term. No matter how much better the new stuff is, you will be less productive using it at first, because you were more familiar with the old stuff. However, as you become more proficient with the new technology, your productivity gradually increases, and eventually your productivity will be greater than it was with the old technology (assuming the new technology is actually better).

So the key is to push through that initial dip, and eventually you get to the increased productivity that comes with mastering the new technology. Easy, right? Well, if your company just replaced your HR system, you have little choice in the matter; you’ll get through that productivity dip because you have no other choice.

However, if you’ve just decided you want to pick up a new programming technique, it’s a little more difficult. Before I got the hang of regular expressions, it was simply far faster for me to whip together something ugly using things like StringTokenizers and substring. Nobody cared if I was using regular expressions, but they did care if I took 10 times as long to complete a task.

On the rare occasions where I needed to make a change to existing regular expressions, I’d end up slogging through references and online tutorials to try and make sense out of it. Each time, after finally figuring it out, I’d tell myself that I was going to remember how these worked next time. But since I hadn’t made regular expressions a part of my standard toolchain, I’d forget everything I learned, and I would be lost again next time I needed to use them.

I eventually got the hang of regular expressions through forced practice and forced application.

Forced practice was straightforward enough: I dedicated time to reading references, running through tutorials, and solving regex challenges. This practice was an important step in building the skills, but I had tried this to a certain degree before. I’d spend a few hours practicing regular expressions, and feel like I was getting the hang of it. But time would pass, and the next time I needed to fix a regex, I’d have forgotten most of it again.

The key for me was forced application of regular expressions. Like the poor HR staff who learn a new HR system because they have no other choice, I forced myself to use regular expressions any time they could be useful, even though it would take me longer than a quick hack with stuff I was already familiar with. Good unit tests helped a lot; though I was not confident in my ability to write bug-free regular expressions, I was confident in my ability to write thorough tests.

As the productivity curve predicted, I was definitely less efficient at first. But as I forced myself to use regular expressions instead of hacking something together more quickly, I gradually improved. And before long, I was past the productivity dip, having finally gotten the hang of regular expressions. Now they are an essential part of my development toolchain, and I am a better programmer.

I know this isn’t really earth shattering advice; my five year old son has figured out that you get better at something the more you do it. But when you find some new technology or technique you want to make part of your development process, I think it’s important to go into it recognizing that not only will it take time to master it, but you will almost certainly be less productive in the short-term than you were before. And I think that if you are prepared for the productivity dip and are willing to accept it, you can push through the difficult times and master it. In the long run, you will be a better developer for it.

Follow @JerryOnJava

Response from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) on Net Neutrality

I emailed Pat Toomey (R-PA), my U.S. Senator, to encourage him to support net neutrality. As you can see from his response, he is opposed to it:

Thank you for contacting me about Federal Communications Commissions' (FCC) net neutrality regulation. I appreciate knowing your thoughts on this issue.

As you may know, on December 21, 2010, the FCC adopted an Open Internet Order, better known as "net neutrality," that imposed new federal regulations on the types of services Internet providers could sell. Verizon Communications sued the FCC arguing that the regulations were too stringent and went beyond the agency's authority.

On January 14, 2014, in the case Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's net neutrality regulation. The Court stated that the FCC did not have the statuary authority to compel a broadband provider to follow the Open Internet Order.

I understand the concerns expressed by those who support net neutrality regulations; however, I also believe that such federal mandates would unduly inhibit this industry's innovation, investment in new technology, and job creation. Moreover, the Internet and online content have thrived in the United States without net neutrality regulations, which throws into question the need for more government intervention. Although there is currently no legislation before the Senate addressing net neutrality, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts on net neutrality in mind, should the Senate begin consideration of open internet legislation.

Thank you again for your correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Pat Toomey
U.S. Senator, Pennsylvania

Whatever your position is on net neutrality, if you are a U.S. citizen, I encourage you to contact your senators and representatives and let them know where you stand. We may not all have the financial resources to compete with large telecoms, but we do still have the votes.