software development concepts
Here’s an interesting thought question from Mike Stall: what’s worse than crashing? Mike provides the following list of crash scenarios, in order from best to worst: 1. Application works as expected and never crashes. 2. Application crashes due to rare bugs that nobody notices or cares about. 3.
macos
I frequently hear apocryphal stories about Macs booting much faster than Windows boxes. There’s a great set of Mac boot time benchmarks on the Silver Mac site that provide solid empirical data to back up those claims: Intel iMacG5 iMacG5 iMacMac Mini10.4.410.4.410.4.510.4.
programming languages
I believe there’s a healthy balance all programmers need to establish, somewhere between… * Locking yourself away in a private office and having an intimate dialog with a compiler about your program. * Getting out in public and having an open dialog with other human beings about your program. I’ve
biology
Ducklings and goslings imprint on the first creature they see shortly after birth. [Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz] discovered that if greylag geese were reared by him from hatching, they would treat him like a parental bird. The goslings followed Lorenz about, and when they were adults they courted him in
patents
Every practicing programmer should read the Wikipedia article on software patents, if you haven’t already. Many software companies are of the opinion that copyrights and trade secrets provide adequate protection against unauthorized copying of their innovations. Companies such as Oracle Corporation and Red Hat are therefore generally opposed to
ui design
Google’s user interface minimalism is admirable. But there’s one part of their homepage UI, downloaded millions of times per day, that leaves me scratching my head: Does anyone actually use the “I'm Feeling Lucky” button? I’ve been an avid Google user since 2000; I use
programming languages
In response to Wil Shipley’s recent post about the lack of an iPhone SDK, a reader left this comment: I often enjoy reading these entries, but you always come across as a little bit of an a**hole. Full of yourself, overly critical and a bit mean. Dismissing and
lua
Garry’s Mod is a fascinating study in guerilla programming. It’s an incredibly successful mod for the game Half-Life 2 that essentially converts it into a giant sandbox powered by Lua. There are a large number of Lua scripted 3rd party modifications for Garry’s mod. In a server
pc building
I previously documented the “Ultimate Developer Rig” I’m building for Scott Hanselman: * Building a PC, Part I * Building a PC, Part II * Building a PC, Part III I added a little bit of PC quieting magic as a finishing touch. Here’s a picture of the final interior, with
software development concepts
Most software projects fail. But that doesn’t mean yours has to. The first question you should ask is a deceptively simple one: how big is it? Steve McConnell explains in Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art: [For a software project], size is easily the most significant determinant of effort,
programming languages
Paul Heberli and Bruce Karsh proposed something they call futurist programming in 1994: We believe there is a great opportunity for Futurist principles to be applied to the science of computer programming. We react against the heavy religious atmosphere that surrounds every aspect of computer programming. We believe it is
installation process
Ned Batchelder shares a complaint about the Mac application installation process: Here’s what I did to install the application Foo [on the Mac]: 1. Downloaded FooDownload.dmg.zip to the desktop. 2. StuffIt Expander launched automatically, and gave me a FooDownload.dmg Folder on the desktop. 3. At this