Delete, delete, delete. Sometimes when people ask, I half-jokingly tell them my job is to wake up each day and delete most of the code I wrote the previous day. It’s not entirely far fetched. Here’s James Golick take:
“Wow — we’re deleting more code than we’re keeping!” To which I responded, “Yeah, of course we are. Don’t you always?”
This illustrates one of my strategies for writing great code. Trying to get it right the first time is futile. So, I stopped trying.
Geek or fail. You’ve probably already seen this all over the Interwebs: Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it. My take? Open “show me the code!” Source puts developers on top of the food chain. No PHB pushing marketing features at you and reshuffling P1 bugs. If they can’t code, you don’t have to take them seriously. There goes the bath water and … was that the baby?
Geeks have an tendency to over-value lower-level layers of the technology stacks based on the misguided belief that higher-level technologies are unnecessarily wasteful.
The inherit assumption that the behavior of non-geeks is always sub-optimal strategy resulting from lack of proper education. Or, as we like to call it, “being mainstream”.
Viscosity (Mac). Another thing Apple inconveniently left out of OS X is OpenVPN support. If you’re been Tunnelblicking so far, check out Viscosity, a much improved OpenVPN client that’s easier to setup and use (it will even import all your existing configurations for you). (Via Nicolas Modrzyk)
Never read passively. I like blogs that have good ideas right there in their name. Jason Brownlee’s latest post chronicles SpicyElephant, a project inspired by the Wired article about the inventor of supermemo. If like me you were looking to try it out after reading the article, there’s your chance.
I always get this little kid excitement when I read about services that come to life that way: pick up a good idea, get it up and running in a month, let other people try it out. It turns the Web into a huge toy store, where all your wishes could come true. Can’t find it here? Try that other aisle. Speaking of kids …
The life we live. Baby’s First Internet is, like the best of them, a great way to teach your kids about life online, laced with the odd humor that a few adults might enjoy. Like:
It’s not your job to right a wrong, just mark it FAIL and move along.
Just begging to be put on a t-shirt. (Via Laughing Squid)
Ciaran