Coding Horror

Lately I've been trying to rid my life of as many physical artifacts as possible. I'm with Merlin Mann on CDs:

Although I'd extend that line of thinking to DVDs as well. The death of physical media has some definite downsides, but after owning certain movies once on VHS, then on DVD, and finally on Blu-Ray, I think I'm now at peace with the idea of not owning any physical media ever again, if I can help it.

My current strategy of wishing my physical media collection into a cornfield involves shipping all our DVDs to Second Spin via media mail, and paying our nephew $1 per CD to rip our CD collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME as a summer project. The point of this exercise is absolutely not piracy; I have no interest in keeping both digital and physical copies of the media I paid for the privilege of owningtemporarily licensing. Note that I didn't bother ripping any of the DVDs because I hardly ever watched them; mostly they just collected dust. But I continue to love music and listen to my music collection on a daily basis. I'll donate all the ripped CDs to some charity or library, and if I can't pull that off, I'll just destroy them outright. Stupid atoms!

CDs, unlike DVDs or even Blu-Rays, are considered reference quality. That is, the uncompressed digital audio data contained on a CD is a nearly perfect representation of the original studio master, for most reasonable people's interpretation of "perfect", at least back in 1980. So if you paid for a CD, you might be worried that ripping it to a compressed digital audio format would result in an inferior listening experience.

I'm not exactly an audiophile, but I like to think I have pretty good ears. I've recommended buying $200+ headphones and headphone amps for quite a while now. By the way: still a good investment! Go do it! Anyhow, previous research and my own experiments led me to write Getting the Best Bang for Your Byte seven years ago. I concluded that nobody could really hear the difference between a raw CD track and an MP3 using a decent encoder at a variable bit rate averaging around 160kbps. Any bit rate higher than that was just wasting space on your device and your bandwidth for no rational reason. So-called "high resolution audio" was recently thoroughly debunked for very similar reasons.

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.

The authors of LAME must have agreed with me, because the typical, standard, recommended, default way of encoding any old audio input to MP3 …

lame --preset standard "cd-track-raw.wav" "cd-track-encoded.mp3"

… now produces variable bit rate MP3 tracks at a bitrate of around 192kbps on average.

(Going down one level to the "medium" preset produces nearly exactly 160kbps average, my 2005 recommendation on the nose.)

Encoders have only gotten better since the good old days of 2005. Given the many orders of magnitude improvement in performance and storage since then, I'm totally comfortable with throwing an additional 32kbps in there, going from 160kbps average to 192kbps average just to be totally safe. That's still a miniscule file size compared to the enormous amount of data required for mythical, aurally perfect raw audio. For a particular 4 minute and 56 second music track, that'd be:

Ripping to uncompressed audio is a non-starter. I don't care how much of an ultra audio quality nerd you are, spending 7× or 5× the bandwidth and storage for completely inaudible "quality" improvements is a dagger directly in the heart of this efficiency-loving nerd, at least. Maybe if you're planning to do a lot of remixing and manipulation it might make sense to retain the raw source audio, but for typical listening, never.

The difference between the 320kbps track and the 192kbps track is more rational to argue about. But it's still 1.6 times the size. Yes, we have tons more bandwidth and storage and power today, but storage space on your mobile device will never be free, nor will bandwidth or storage in the cloud, where I think most of this stuff should ultimately reside. And all other things being equal, wouldn't you rather be able to fit 200 songs on your device instead of 100? Wouldn't you rather be able to download 10 tracks in the same time instead of 5? Efficiency, that's where it's at. Particularly when people with dog's ears wouldn't even be able to hear the difference.

But Wait, I Have Dog Ears

Of course you do. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Personally, I think you're a human being full of crap, but let's drop some science on this and see if you can prove it.

When someone tells me "Dudes, come on, let's steer clear of the worst song ever written!", I say challenge accepted. Behold The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment!

As proposed on our very own Audio and Video Production Stack Exchange, we're going to do a blind test of the same 2 minute excerpt of a particular rock audio track at a few different bitrates, ranging from 128kbps CBR MP3 all the way up to raw uncompressed CD audio. Each sample was encoded (if necessary), then exported to WAV so they all have the same file size. Can you tell the difference between any of these audio samples using just your ears?

1. Listen to each two minute audio sample

(update: experiment concluded; links removed.)

2. Rate each sample for encoding quality

Once you've given each audio sample a listen – with only your ears please, not analysis software – fill out this brief form and rate each audio sample from 1 to 5 on encoding quality, where one represents worst and five represents flawless.

Yes, it would be better to use a variety of different audio samples, like SoundExpert does, but I don't have time to do that. Anyway, if the difference in encoding bitrate quality is as profound as certain vocal elements of the community would have you believe it is, that difference should be audible in any music track. To those who might argue that I am trolling audiophiles into listening to one of the worst-slash-best rock songs of all time … over and over and over … to prove a point … I say, how dare you impugn my honor in this manner, sir. How dare you!

I wasn't comfortable making my generous TypePad hosts suffer through the bandwidth demands of multiple 16 megabyte audio samples, so this was a fun opportunity to exercise my long dormant Amazon S3 account, and test out Amazon's on-demand CloudFront CDN. I hope I'm not rubbing any copyright holders the wrong way with this test; I just used a song excerpt for science, man! I'll pull the files entirely after a few weeks just to be sure.

You'll get no argument from me that the old standby of 128kbps constant bit rate encoding is not adequate for most music, even today, and you should be able to hear that in this test. But I also maintain that virtually nobody can reliably tell the difference between a 160kbps variable bit rate MP3 and the raw CD audio, much less 192kbps. If you'd like to prove me wrong, this is your big chance. Like the announcer in Smash TV, I say good luck – you're gonna need it.

So which is it – are you a dog or a man? Give the samples a listen, then rate them. I'll post the results of this experiment in a few days.

About a year and a half ago, I researched the state of routers: about as unsexy as it gets but essential to the stability, reliability, and security of your Internet connection. My conclusion?

This is boring old plain vanilla commodity router hardware, but when combined with an open source firmware, it is a massive improvement over my three year old, proprietary high(ish) end router. The magic router formula these days is a combination of commodity hardware and open-source firmware. I'm so enamored of this one-two punch combo, in fact, I might even say it represents the future. Not just of the everyday workhorse routers we all need to access the Internet – but the future of all commodity hardware.

I felt a little bad about that post, because I quickly migrated from the DD-WRT open source firmware to OpenWRT and then finally settled on Tomato. I guess that's open source, too many choices with nobody to really tell you what's going to work reliably on your particular hardware. But the good news is that I've been running Tomato quite happily with total stability for about a year now – primarily because it is gloriously simple, but also because it has the most functional quality of service (QoS) implementation.

Why does functional Quality of Service matter so very much in a router? Unless you have an Internet connection that's only used by your grandmother to visit her church's website on Sundays, QoS is the difference between a responsive Internet and one that's brutally dog slow.

Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the internet bandwidth to download the Lord Of The Rings Special Extended Edition in 1080p HDTV format. You're screwed - because the hotspot router does not have an effective QoS system. In fact, I haven't come across a shop or an apartment block locally that has any QoS system in use at all. Most residents are not particularly happy with the service they [usually] pay for.

When I switched from DD-WRT and OpenWRT to Tomato, I had to buy a different router, because Tomato only supports certain router hardware, primarily Broadcom. The almost universal recommendation was the Asus RT-N16, so that's what I went with.

And it is still an excellent choice. If you just want a modern, workhorse single band wireless N router that won't break the bank, but has plenty of power and memory to run Tomato, definitely try the Asus RT-N16. It's currently available for under $80 (after $10 rebate). Once you get Tomato on there, you've got a fine combination of hardware and software. Take it from this SmallNetBuilder user review:

I'm a semigeek. Some of the stuff on this site confuses me. But I figured out enough to get this router and install Tomato USB. Great combination. Have not had any problems with the router. Love all the features that Tomato gives me. Like blocking my son's iPod after 7 PM. Blocking certain websites. Yeah, I know you can do that with other routers but Tomato made it easy. Also love the QoS features. Netflix devices get highest bandwidth while my wife's bittorrent gets low.

Review was too heavily slanted against the Asus software, which I agree is crap. I bought the router for its hardware specs. Large memory. Fast processor. Gigabyte lan. 2 USB ports.

What's not to love? Well, the dual band thing, mainly. If you want a truly top of the line router with incredible range, and simultaneous dual band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz performance bragging rights, fortunately there's the Asus RT-N66U.

This is, currently at least, the state of the art in routers. It has a faster CPU and twice the memory (256 MB) of the RT-N16. But at $190 it is also over twice the price. Judge for yourself in the SmallNetBuilder review:

As good as the RT-66U is, our wireless performance results once again show that no router is good in every mode that we test. But that said, the Dark Knight clearly outperformed both the NETGEAR WNDR4500 and Cisco Linksys E4200V2 in most of our two and three-stream tests. And it's the only router in recent memory able to reach to our worst-case/lowest-signal test location on the 5 GHz band, albeit with barely-usable throughput. Still, this is an accomplishment in itself.

If you're going to spend close to $200 for a wireless router, you should get a lot for your money. The Dark Knight seems to deliver wireless performance to justify its high price and has routing speed fast enough to handle any service a consumer is likely to have, even our friends in Europe and Asia.

Its only weakness? Take a guess. Oh wait, no need to guess, it's the same "weakness" the RT-N16 shared, the sketchy Asus firmware it ships with out of the box. That's why we get our Tomato on, people! There is complete and mature support for the RT-N66U in Tomato; for a walkthrough on how to get it installed (don't be shy, it's not hard) Check out Shadow Andy's TomatoUSB firmware flashing guide.

Does having nice router hardware with a current open source firmware matter? Well, if your livelihood depends on the Internet like mine does, then I certainly think so.

At the very least, if you or someone you love is also an Internet fan and hasn't given any particular thought to what router they use, maybe it's time to start checking into that. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go donate to the Tomato project.

I hesitate to say everyone should have a child, because becoming a parent is an intensely personal choice. I try my best to avoid evangelizing the experience, but the deeper in I get, the more I believe that nothing captures the continued absurdity of the human condition better than having a child does.

After becoming a parent, the first thing you'll say to yourself is, my God, it is a miracle any of us even exist, because I want to freakin' kill this kid at least three times a day. But then your child will spontaneously hug you, or tell you some stupid joke that they can't stop laughing at, or grab for your hand while crossing the street and then … well, here we all are, aren't we? I'm left wondering if I'll ever be able to love other people – or for that matter myself – as much as I love my children. Unconditional, irrational, nonsensical love. That's humanity in a nutshell.

Parenting is by far the toughest job I've ever had. It makes my so-called career seem awfully quaint in comparison.

My favorite part of the parenting process, though, is finally being able to talk to my kids. When the dam breaks and all that crazy stuff they had locked away in those tiny brains for the first two years comes uncontrollably pouring out. Finding out what they're thinking about and what kind of people they are at last. Watching them discover and explore the surface of language is utterly fascinating. After spending two years trying to guess – with extremely limited success – what they want and need, truly, what greater privilege is there than to simply ask them? Language: Best. Invention. Ever. I like it so much I'm using it right now!

Language also allows kids to demonstrate just what crazy little roiling balls of id they (and by extension, we) all are on the inside. Kids don't know what it means to be mad, to be happy, to be sad. They have to be taught what emotions are, how to handle them, and how to deal in a constructive way with everything the world is throwing at them. You'll get a ringside seat to this process not as a passive observer, but as their coach and spirit guide. They have no coping mechanisms except the ones we teach them. The difference between a child who freaks out at the slightest breeze, and a child who can confidently navigate an unfamiliar world? The parents.

See, I told you this was going to be tough.

There are of course innumerable books on parenting and child-rearing, most of which I have no time to read because by the time I'm done being a parent for the day, I'm too exhausted to read more about it. And, really, who wants to read about parenting when you're living the stuff 24/7? Except on Parenting Stack Exchange, of course. However, there is one particular book I happened to discover that was shockingly helpful, even after barely ten pages in. If you ever need to deal with children aged 2 to 99, stop reading right now and go buy How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.

We already own three copies. And you're welcome.

What's so great about this book? I originally found it through A.J. Jacobs, who I mentioned in Trust Me, I'm Lying. Here's how he describes it:

The best marriage advice book I’ve read is a paperback called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. As you might deduce from the title, it wasn’t meant as a marriage advice book. But the techniques in this book are so brilliant, I use them in every human interaction I can, no matter the age of the conversant. It’s a strategy that was working well until today.

The book was written by a pair of former New York City teachers, and their thesis is that we talk to kids all wrong. You can’t argue with kids, and you shouldn’t dismiss their complaints. The magic formula includes: listen, repeat what they say, label their emotions. The kids will figure out the solution themselves.

I started using it on Jasper, who would throw a tantrum about his brothers monopolizing the pieces to Mouse Trap. I listened, repeated what he said, and watched the screaming and tears magically subside. It worked so well, I decided, why limit it to kids? My first time trying it on a grown-up was one morning at the deli. I was standing behind a guy who was trying unsuccessfully to make a call on his cell.

“Oh come on! I can’t get a signal here? Dammit. This is New York.”
He looked at me.
“No signal?” I say. “Here in New York?” (Repeat what they say.)
“It’s not like we’re in goddamn Wisconsin.”
“Mmmm.” (Listen. Make soothing noises.)
“We’re not on a farm. It’s New York, for God’s sake,” he said.
“That’s frustrating,” I say. (Label their emotions.)
He calmed down.

This book taught me that, as with so many other things in life, I've been doing it all wrong. I thought it was my job as a parent to solve problems for my children, to throw myself on life's figurative grenades to protect them. Consider the following illustrated examples from the book.

Notice how she cleverly lets the child reach an alternative solution himself, rather than providing the "solution" to him on a silver platter as the all-seeing, all-knowing omniscient adult. This honestly would never have occurred to me, because, well, if we're out of Toastie Crunchies, then we are out of freaking Toastie Crunchies!

I've learned to fall back whenever possible to simply describing things or situations instead of judging or pontificating. I explain the consequences of potential actions rather than jumping impatiently to "don't do that".

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk is full of beautiful little insights on human interaction like this, and I was surprised to find how often what I thought was a good parenting behavior was working against us. Turns out, children aren't the only ones who have trouble dealing with their emotions and learning to communicate. I haven't just improved my relationship with my kids using the practical advice in this book, I've improved my interactions with all human beings from age 2 to 99.

Kids will teach you, if you let them. They'll teach you that getting born is the easy part. Anyone can do that in a day. But becoming a well-adjusted human being? That'll take the rest of your life.

I've been fortunate to have some measure of success in my life, primarily through this very blog over the last eight years, and in creating Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange over the last four years. With the birth of our twin girls, I've had a few months to pause and reflect on those experiences. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How would I do things differently next time? What advice should I give other people based on my own life experiences?

The short answer is that I wouldn't.

There are too many paths forward in life; I barely feel qualified to make decisions about what to do in my own life, much less recommend strategies for others in theirs. On some level I feel like Jared Fogle, who lost 245 pounds eating nothing but Subway subs. Maybe that worked for him, but how does that make it a valid diet strategy for the rest of the world? In other words, what I did worked for me, but I'm crazy.

That's also never stopped anyone else from handing out terrible life advice hand over fist before. So I figure why not. Who wants to live forever?

Under pressure to make some sense of what I've been doing with my life for the last eight years, I put together a small presentation which I delivered yesterday at this year's Atlassian summit.

How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

If you're reading this abstract, you're not awesome enough. Attend this session to unlock the secrets of Jeff Atwood, world famous blogger and industry leading co-founder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Learn how you too can determine clear goals for your future and turn your dreams into reality through positive-minded conceptualization techniques.* Within six to eight weeks, you'll realize the positive effects of Jeff Atwood's wildly popular Coding Horror blog in your own life, transporting you to an exciting new world of wealth, happiness and political power.

* May or may not also include working hard on things that matter for the rest of your life.

I hope you can forgive me for the title, and I guess the rest of the abstract, and probably the entirety of the presentation too, but I find it's easier to be serious when I'm not being entirely serious. At any rate, it's complicated.

Here's what I've seen work:

1. Embrace the Suck
2. Do It in Public
3. Pick Stuff That Matters

The video explains. When put on the spot, under duress, I have selectively doled out this advice to a few people over the years – and miraculously, I've seen them succeed using these rules, too.

(I put a lot of additional explanatory detail in the slide notes that you'll only see if you download the full presentation.)

"it's better to be safe than sorry" is such crap. You know what's better than being safe? Being AWESOME.

— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) January 11, 2009

Mostly, I think it's the fear that gets us, in all its forms. Fear of not achieving. Fear of not keeping up. Fear of looking dumb. Fear of being inadequate. Fear of being exposed. Fear of failure. The only thing preventing us from being awesome is our own fear of sucking.

So that's why I say we embrace it. Who wants to live forever?

I didn't intend for Please Don't Learn to Code to be so controversial, but it seemed to strike a nerve. Apparently a significant percentage of readers stopped reading at the title.

So I will open with my own story. I think you'll find it instructive.

My mom once told me that the only reason she dated my father is because her mother told her to stay away from that boy, he's a bad influence.

If she had, I would not exist.

True story, folks.

I'd argue that the people who need to learn to code will be spurred on most of all by honesty, not religious faith in the truthiness of code as a universal good. Go in knowing both sides of the story, because there are no silver bullets in code. If, after hearing both the pros and cons, you still want to learn to code, then by all means learn to code. If you're so easily dissuaded by hearing a few downsides to coding, there are plenty of other things you could spend your time learning that are more unambiguously useful and practical. Per Michael Lopp, you could learn to be a better communicator. Per Gina Trapani, you could learn how to propose better solutions. Slinging code is just a tiny part of the overall solution in my experience. Why optimize for that?

On the earliest computers, everyone had to be a programmer because there was no software. If you wanted the computer to do anything, you wrote code. Computers in the not so distant past booted directly to the friendly blinking cursor of a BASIC interpreter. I view the entire arc of software development as a field where we programmers spend our lives writing code so that our fellow human beings no longer need to write code (or even worse, become programmers) to get things done with computers. So this idea that "everyone must know how to code" is, to me, going backwards.

I fully support a push for basic Internet literacy. But in order to be a competent driver, does everyone need to know, in detail, how their automobile works? Must we teach all human beings the basics of being an auto mechanic, and elevate shop class to the same level as English and Mathematics classes? Isn't knowing how to change a tire, and when to take your car in for an oil change, sufficient? If your toilet is clogged, you shouldn't need to take a two week in depth plumbing course on toiletcademy.com to understand how to fix that. Reading a single web page, just in time, should be more than adequate.

What is code, in the most abstract sense?

code (kōd) …

3. 1. A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages.
   2. A system of symbols, letters, or words given certain arbitrary meanings, used for transmitting messages requiring secrecy or brevity.
4. A system of symbols and rules used to represent instructions to a computer…

— The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

Is it punchcards? Remote terminals? Emacs? Textmate? Eclipse? Visual Studio? C? Ruby? JavaScript? In the 1920s, it was considered important to learn how to use slide rules. In the 1960s, it was considered important to learn mechanical drawing. None of that matters today. I'm hesitant to recommend any particular approach to coding other than the fundamentals as outlined in Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, because I'm not sure we'll even recognize coding in the next 20 or 30 years. To kids today, perhaps coding will eventually resemble Minecraft, or building levels in Portal 2.

But everyone should try writing a little code, because it somehow sharpens the mind, right? Maybe in the same abstract way that reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from beginning to end does. Honestly, I'd prefer that people spend their time discovering what problems they love and find interesting, first, and researching the hell out of those problems. The toughest thing in life is not learning a bunch of potentially hypothetically useful stuff, but figuring out what the heck it is you want to do. If said research and exploration leads to coding, then by all means learn to code with my blessing … which is worth exactly what it sounds like, nothing.

So, no, I don't advocate learning to code for the sake of learning to code. What I advocate is shamelessly following your joy. For example, I received the following email yesterday.

I am a 45 year old attorney/C.P.A. attempting to abandon my solo law practice as soon as humanly possible and strike out in search of my next vocation. I am actually paying someone to help me do this and, as a first step in the "find yourself" process, I was told to look back over my long and winding career and identify those times in my professional life when I was doing something I truly enjoyed.

Coming of age as an accountant during the PC revolution (when I started my first "real" job at Arthur Andersen we were still billing clients to update depreciation schedules manually), I spend a lot of time learning how to make computers, printers, and software (VisiCalc anyone?) work. This quasi-technical aspect of my work reached its apex when I was hired as a healthcare financial analyst for a large hospital system. When I arrived for my first day of work in that job, I learned that my predecessor had bequeathed me only a one page static Excel spreadsheet that purported to "analyze" a multi-million dollar managed care contract for a seven hospital health system. I proceeded to build my own spreadsheet but quickly exceeded the database functional capacity of Excel and had to teach myself Access and thereafter proceeded to stretch the envelope of Access' spreadsheet capabilities to their utmost capacity – I had to retrieve hundreds of thousands of patient records and then perform pro forma calculations on them to see if the proposed contracts would result in more or less payment given identical utilization.

I will be the first to admit that I was not coding in any professional sense of the word. I did manage to make Access do things that MS technical support told me it could not do but I was still simply using very basic commands to bend an existing application to my will. The one thing I do remember was being happy. I typed infinitely nested commands into formula cells for twelve to fourteen hours a day and was still disappointed when I had to stop.

My experience in building that monster and making it run was, to date, my most satisfying professional accomplishment, despite going on to later become CFO of another healthcare facility, a feat that should have fulfilled all of my professional ambitions at that time. More than just the work, however, was the group of like-minded analysts and IT folks with whom I became associated as I tried, failed, tried, debugged, and continued building this behemoth of a database. I learned about Easter Eggs and coding lore and found myself hacking into areas of the hospital mainframe which were completely offlimits to someone of my paygrade. And yet, I kept pursuing my "professional goals" and ended up in jobs/careers I hated doing work I loathed.

Here's a person who a) found an interesting problem, b) attempted to create a solution to the problem, which naturally c) led them to learning to code. And they loved it. This is how it's supposed to work. I didn't become a programmer because someone told me learning to code was important, I became a programmer because I wanted to change the rules of the video games I was playing, and learning to code was the only way to do that. Along the way, I too fell in love.

All that to say that as I stand at the crossroads once more, I still hear the siren song of those halcyon days of quasi-coding during which I enjoyed my work. My question for you is whether you think it is even possible for someone of my vintage to learn to code to a level that I could be hired as a programmer. I am not trying to do this on the side while running the city of New York as a day job. Rather, I sincerely and completely want to become a bona fide programmer and spend my days creating (and/or debugging) something of value.

Unfortunately, calling yourself a "programmer" can be a career-limiting move, particularly for someone who was a CFO in a previous career. People who work with money tend to make a lot of money; see Wall Street.

But this isn't about money, is it? It's about love. So, if you want to be a programmer, all you need to do is follow your joy and fall in love with code. Any programmer worth their salt immediately recognizes a fellow true believer, a person as madly in love with code as they are, warts and all. Welcome to the tribe.

And if you're reading this and thinking, "screw this Jeff Atwood guy, who is he to tell me whether I should learn to code or not", all I can say is: good! That's the spirit!