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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
I've been wary of 64-bit on the desktop, as the benefits are usually outweighed by the compatibility problems. I agree that 64-bit operating systems are inevitable in the big scheme of things, but I've struggled to see the relevance of 64-bit for typical desktop and laptop
In my continuing quest for a decently full-featured graphics editor that hasn't succumbed to feature bloat, I recently installed Paint.NET for the first time. I'lll admit that I had low expectations based on the abysmal user interfaces I've experienced in other open source
Does this sound familiar? > your program (n): a maze of non-sequiturs littered with clever-clever tricks and irrelevant comments. Compare MY PROGRAM.my program (n): a gem of algorithmic precision, offering the most sublime balance between compact, efficient coding on the one hand, and fully commented legibility for posterity on
I've often thought there is a subtle art to the humble hyperlink, that stalwart building block of hypertext, the stuff that Ted Nelson's Xanadu dream was made of. The word hypertext was coined by Nelson and published in a paper delivered to a national conference of