meetings
How many meetings did you have today? This week? This month? Now ask yourself how many of those meetings were worthwhile, versus the work that you could have accomplished in that same time. This might lead one to wonder why we even have meetings at all. At GitHub we don&
open source
The book Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596007590/?tag=codihorr-20] is a fantastic reference for anyone involved in a software project – whether you're running the show or not. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596007590/?tag=codihorr-20]
marketing
I'm a huge Steve Yegge fan, so It was a great honor to have Steve Yegge on a recent Stack Overflow podcast. One thing I couldn't have predicted, however, was one particular theme of Steve's experience at Google and Amazon that kept coming up
programming languages
As programmers, we deal with a lot of unusual keyboard characters that typical users rarely need to type, much less think about: $ # % {} * [] ~ & <> Even the characters that are fairly regularly used in everyday writing -- such as the humble dash, parens, period, and question mark -- have radically
communication
I'm a big fan of Twitter. The service itself is nothing revolutionary; it's essentially public instant messaging. But don't underestimate the power of taking a previously siloed, private one-to-one communication medium and making it public. Why talk to one person when you could talk
programming concepts
Software developers do love to code [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all/]. But very few of them, in my experience, can explain why they're coding. Try this exercise on one of your teammates if you don't believe me. Ask them what they're doing. Then ask
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&
blogging
I met Jon Udell this year at MIX. I was reading through his excellent blog to flesh out some of the topics we talked about, when I was struck by the powerful message of this particular entry: When people tell me they're too busy to blog, I ask
software development concepts
I was browsing around the CouchDb [http://www.couchdb.com/CouchDB/CouchDBWeb.nsf/direct/Introduction] wiki [http://couchdb.infogami.com/] yesterday when I saw Damien Katz' hilarious description [http://couchdb.infogami.com/alpha1] of how technical documentation really gets written. You know, in the real world: > Welcome to
communication
I've occasionally been told that I have a confrontational style of communication . But that's not necessarily a bad thing – as Kathy Sierra points out, the smackdown learning model [http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/08/the_smackdown_l.html] can be surprisingly effective: >
communication
One of the funniest things on the internet, for my money, is Eric S. Raymond's epic FAQ, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]. It's 32 pages, 1,066 paragraphs, 10,289 words, and 51,757 characters. That
software development concepts
Rajesh Setty [http://blog.lifebeyondcode.com/blog] has some unusual advice [http://www.cioupdate.com/career/article.php/3581436] for IT professionals: stop wasting time in the technology skill-set rat race, and start building your personal brand: > Jack meets Janet and they start talking. Jack explains who he is