Last year in Programmers as Human Beings, I mentioned that I was reading Programmers At Work. It's a great collection of interviews with famous programmers circa 1986. All the interviews are worth reading, but the interview with Bill Gates has one particular answer that cuts to the bone:
If you're on the fence about the impending release of Windows Vista, I recommend trying before you buy. Every Vista DVD includes the ability to install any edition of Vista without a product key. When you install without a product key, you get an automatic 30 day evaluation
Edward Tufte's print world is filled with stunningly beautiful visualizations. Even seemingly mundane things like visualizations of Ruby, Java, and JavaScript grammars can be beautiful. But they're static. They don't move. They're not interactive. That's where Ben comes in. If
There's an interesting comment in this Amazon user review of The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556159390/105-1849539-8990040]: > My favorite entry, especially fun to find in light of Microsoft's legal problems arising in part from its relationship
Nicholas Zakas enumerates the number one reason why good JavaScript libraries fail [http://www.amazon.com/gp/plog/post.html/ref=cm_blog_pl/104-9847257-2963905?ie=UTF8&pt=personalBlog&aid=PlogMyCustomersAgent&ot=customer&pd=1164175937.423&pid=PMCA1J3TWE84RTHQXat1164175038&iid=A1J3TWE84RTHQX] : > Lack of documentation.
Part of Chuck Jazdzewski's fatherly advice to new programmers is this nugget: Programming is fun. It is the joy of discovery. It is the joy of creation. It is the joy of accomplishment. It is the joy of learning. It is fun to see your handiwork displaying on
Don Park invented Identicons [http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2007/01/18/visual-security-9-block-ip-identification] last week. An Identicon is a small, anonymized visual glyph that represents your IP address . Don explains it [http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2007/01/19/identicon-explained] better than I do: > I originally came
While reading Larry O'Brien's latest column in SD Times, I couldn't help noticing that the article text was dwarfed by the advertisements. I was curious exactly how much of the page was dedicated to advertising. There's a clever technique used in the
Name any prominent software technology, and you'll find a certification program for that technology. For a fee, of course. It's a dizzying, intimidating array of acronyms: MCSD, SCJD. RHCE, ACSA. And the company offering the certification is quite often the very same one selling the product.
Robert Cringley's 1995 documentary Triumph of the Nerds: An Irreverent History of the PC Industry features dozens of fascinating interviews with icons of the software industry. It included this brief interview segment with Steve Jobs, where he said the following: The only problem with Microsoft is they just
I've been reluctant to respond to the Five Things You Didn't Know About Me meme. I generally take Kathy Sierra's advice when it comes to describing my background: How many talks do you see where the speaker has multiple bullet points and slides just
MIT's Technology Review recently interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup in a two-part article (part one, part two). You may know Bjarne as the inventor of the C++ programming language. Indeed, he even maintains a comprehensive C++ FAQ that answers every imaginable C++ question. Here are a few select quotes from