technology trends
I have a great deal of respect for Apple’s iPod juggernaut. They’ve almost single-handedly legitimized the market for downloadable music. The kind you pay for. The kind that, at least in theory, supports the artists who produce the music instead of ripping them off. That said, I have
filepaths
I recently imported some source code for a customer that exceeded the maximum path limit of 256 characters. The paths in question weren’t particularly meaningful, just pathologically* long, with redundant subfolders. To complete the migration, I renamed some of the parent folders to single character values. This made me
.net framework
The .NET framework provides two random number generators. The first is System.Random. But is it really random? Pseudo-random numbers are chosen with equal probability from a finite set of numbers. The chosen numbers are not completely random because a definite mathematical algorithm is used to select them, but they
software development
In Microsoft Project and the Gantt Waterfall, many commenters wondered why software projects can’t be treated like any other construction or engineering project: I am not sure why it is so difficult to estimate software development? Is it a mystery, magic, is there a man behind the curtain that
software development concepts
Simplicity isn’t easy to achieve, and John Maeda’s short book, The Laws of Simplicity, provokes a lot of thought on the topic. Programmers swim in a sea of unending complexity. We get so used to complexity as an ambient norm that we begin, consciously or unconsciously, projecting it
software development concepts
I’ve been using Microsoft Project quite a bit recently with a certain customer of ours. They bleed Gantt. I hadn’t used Project in years, and after being exposed to it again, it really struck me how deeply the waterfall model is ingrained into the product. Take a look.
html
Bill de hra recently highlighted a little experiment Ian Hickson ran in August: I did a short study recently checking only for syntax errors in HTML documents, and the results were that of the 667416 files tested, 626575 had syntax errors. Over 93%. That’s only syntax errors in the
user experience
In my opinion, the new Office 2007 user interface is one of the most innovative things to come out of Redmond in years. It’s nothing less than the death of the main menu as a keystone GUI metaphor. This is a big deal. Historically, where Office goes, everyone else
user experience
I remember switching my homepage from AltaVista to Google back in 2000 for one simple reason: it was blazingly fast. It’s the same reason I don't use personalized Google, or Google suggest as my homepage: they’re simply too slow. Dare Obasanjo* wonders if AJAX apps are
screencasting
If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a single screencast equal to a thousand word blog post? There’s a lot to be said for lightweight, embedded screencasts. I’m particularly fond of animated GIF screencasts for small demonstrations. You can see examples in these posts: one, two,
tags: software development concepts
Leon Bambrick is full of good ideas. Like KeyTraino, for instance: When you use the toolbar, the menus or the context-menus of an application, KeyTraino shows the alternative keystroke you could’ve used. Evidently someone at SlickEdit is wearing a tinfoil hat that transmits at the same frequency as Leon’
customization
Vendors often pitch customization as a feature of their software: In the end, customizations and enhancements to a software solution are nearly always needed. This allows the software to be tailored to your needs, allowing for greater success, either with users or in business processes. They shouldn’t be considered