Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:
guids
Do you remember the scene from the movie Full Metal Jacket where the marines recite the USMC creed? It's a little known fact, but programmers have a similar creed: This is my GUID. There are many like it but this one is mine. My GUID is my best
naming conventions
Jason Kemp notes that Microsoft's choice of product names can have some unintended consequences [http://jasonkemp.ca/archive/2005/08/01/2696.aspx]: > I don't know yet how I feel about the name Windows Vista, but it at least has some character to it. But
programming languages
Looking for something fun to do on family night? How about a friendly game of c-jump, the programming board game [http://www.c-jump.com/]: Although the prospect of a computer programming board game sounds positively stultifying, there is a rich history of computer games based on programming. It's
user experience
One of the biggest highlights of PDC 2005 was the first day keynote, when the Office 12 UI was unveiled [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/pdc/gallery.mspx]. I don't know if people realized the significance of what we saw at the time-- but we had just
software development concepts
During the fantastic Monad [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2AC59B30-5A44-4782-B0B7-79FE2EFD1280&displaylang=en] session at PDC 2005*, Jeffrey Snover and Jim Truher illustrated the tradeoff between verbosity and conciseness: cp c:apples c:oranges -fo -r copy-item c:apples c:oranges -force -recurse Monad has a ton
windows
Does anyone remember the Task List from early versions of Windows? From those humble beginnings comes my all time favorite windows applet, the venerable Task Manager. Task Manager was introduced with Windows NT 4.0, and although it has changed little in the intervening nine years, it hasn't
It's easy to fire off an email with barely any effort at all. And that's exactly how much effort goes into most emails: none. Ole Eichhorn's Tyranny of Email [http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html] offers a succinct set of guidelines
c++
I'm not a big screensaver enthusiast per se, but one of my all time favorite screensavers is definitely Moire from the DirectX 8.1 SDK [http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/products.asp#ScreenSavers]. It's simple yet visually striking, and it works seamlessly on multiple monitors. It&
software development concepts
In Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, DeMarco and Lister outline the dangers of penalizing negative thinking: Once you've identified and quantified these risks, they can be managed just like the others. But getting them out on the table can be a problem. The culture of
ui design
The Top 8 reasons user interface design is in the stone age is more of a rant than a reasoned argument, but it's still worth reading. If UI design is in the stone age, why are there at least two sites which document known UI patterns? 1. UI
security
Marcus Ranum, the inventor of the proxy firewall [http://www.ranum.com/stock_content/about.html], brilliantly condenses why many security efforts are doomed from the start: they fall prey to the The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security [http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/] : 1. Default
conferences
Courtesy of my employer, I have the privilege of attending this year's Professional Developers Conference. I've been to a few trade shows, but this is the first technical conference I've ever attended. I arrive Monday night, and I'm definitely looking forward to