Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow, Discourse, and RGMII. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Let's be kind to each other. Find me
user experience
Frets on Fire is an open source clone of Guitar Hero. It’s a great idea. Think of all the user-created songs we could play! My excitement quickly faded after I downloaded it and tried it out. I’ll be first in line to champion gameplay over graphics, but the
programming languages
Earlier this week I wrote about The Two Types of Programmers. Based on the huge number of comments, it seemed to strike a nerve. Or two. This surprised me, because it was never meant to be the inflammatory, provocative diatribe that many people interpreted it as. It got so out
browser
Two weeks ago, Apple announced a new version of WebKit, the underlying rendering technology of their Safari web browser. The feature list is impressive: * Enhanced Rich Text Editing * Faster JavaScript and DOM (~ 2x) * Faster Page Loading * SVG support * XPath support * Improved JavaScript XML technology (XSLT, DOMParser, XMLSerializer, and enhanced XMLHttpRequest
software development concepts
Mistakes are inevitable on any software project. But mistakes, if handled appropriately, are OK. Mistakes can be intercepted, adjusted, and ultimately addressed. The root of deep, fatal software project problems is not knowing when you’re making a mistake. These types of mistakes tend to fester into massive, systemic project
programming languages
Contrary to myth, there aren’t fourteen types of programmers. There are really only two, as Ben Collins-Sussman reminds us. There are two “classes” of programmers in the world of software development: I’m going to call them the 20% and the 80%. The 20% folks are what many would
e-commerce
A recent Wall Street Journal describes Ticketmaster’s problems with online scalpers: The Internet era has brought speed and convenience to all sorts of consumer transactions. For concertgoers, however, it has also led to ever-faster sellouts for hot events. Ticketmaster deploys technology that is supposed to stop brokers from gaining
guitar hero
I’m a huge fan of the Guitar Hero series. After reading the first reviews in November 2005, I rushed out to get one of the few available copies at my local Best Buy. It was an obscure title at the time – I had no idea it was even being
code reviews
Tom Dommett wrote in to share his positive experience with pair programming: The idea is two developers work on the same machine. Both have keyboard and mouse. At any given time one is driver and the other navigator. The roles switch either every hour, or whenever really. The driver codes,
programming languages
Reginald Braithwaite writes consistently great stuff on his blog, but I think my absolute favorite thing he’s ever written is We Have Lost Control of the Apparatus. But we programmers have lost and we must be realistic about things. The fact of the matter is this: people own their
security
I encourage my coworkers to lock their computers. Security, after all, is everyone’s business. But often gentle encouragement is not enough. Sometimes, more... persuasive methods are necessary. I first learned about the noble art of goating from from Omar Shahine: We have this problem in Hotmail. If you walk
software development
Since I started at Vertigo, here are a few of the projects I’ve worked on: * Michelangelo * Nash * Whiskeytown * Gobstopper These are our internal project code names. The names are chosen alphabetically from a set of items; every new project gets a name from the set. We start with A,
software development
In this era of pervasive broadband, I’m constantly surprised how often I am forced to buy a physical CD or DVD to obtain the software I want. Physical distribution methods have their place, but they should be on the decline by now. Software is best distributed digitally through our