software development concepts

Touch Laptops

touchscreens

Touch Laptops

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how much I like the Surface RT. I wasn’t expecting a lot when I ordered it, but after a day of use, I realized this was more than Yet Another Gadget. It might represent a brave new world of laptop design. How

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Today is Goof Off at Work Day

software development concepts

Today is Goof Off at Work Day

When you’re hired at Google, you only have to do the job you were hired for 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, you can work on whatever you like – provided it advances Google in some way. At least, that’s the theory. Google’s 20

By Jeff Atwood ·
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New Programming Jargon

programming languages

New Programming Jargon

Stack Overflow – like most online communities I’ve studied – naturally trends toward increased strictness over time. It’s primarily a defense mechanism, an immune system of the sort a child develops after first entering school or daycare and being exposed to the wide, wide world of everyday sneezes and coughs

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Coding Horror: The Book

software development concepts

Coding Horror: The Book

If I had to make a list of the top 10 things I’ve done in my life that I regret, “writing a book” would definitely be on it. I took on the book project mostly because it was an opportunity to work with a few friends whose company I

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Betting the Company on Windows 8

operating systems

Betting the Company on Windows 8

I’d argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we’ve seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows – at its core, you’ve got the same old stuff: a start menu, a desktop with

By Jeff Atwood ·
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The PHP Singularity

php

The PHP Singularity

Look at this incredible thing Ian Baker created. Look at it! What you’re seeing is not Photoshopped. This is an actual photo of a real world, honest to God double-clawed hammer. Such a thing exists. Isn’t that amazing? And also, perhaps, a little disturbing? That wondrous hammer is

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Please Don’t Learn to Code

programming languages

Please Don’t Learn to Code

The whole “everyone should learn programming” meme has gotten so out of control that the mayor of New York City actually vowed to learn to code in 2012. A noble gesture to garner the NYC tech community vote, for sure, but if the mayor of New York City actually needs

By Jeff Atwood ·
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This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details

software development concepts

This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details

Fair warning: this is a blog post about automated cat feeders. Sort of. But bear with me, because I’m also trying to make a point about software. If you have a sudden urge to click the back button on your browser now, I don’t blame you. I don’

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Visualizing Code to Fail Faster

programming languages

Visualizing Code to Fail Faster

In What You Can’t See You Can’t Get I mentioned in passing how frustrated I was that the state of the art in code editors and IDE has advanced so little since 2003. A number of commenters pointed out the amazing Bret Victor talk Inventing on Principle. I

By Jeff Atwood ·
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The End of Pagination

pagination

The End of Pagination

What do you do when you have a lot of things to display to the user, far more than can possibly fit on the screen? Paginate, naturally. There are plenty of other real world examples in this 2007 article, but I wouldn’t bother. If you’ve seen one pagination

By Jeff Atwood ·
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What You Can’t See You Can’t Get

programming languages

What You Can’t See You Can’t Get

I suppose What You See Is What You Get has its place, but as an OCD addled programmer, I have a problem with WYSIWYG as a one size fits all solution. Whether it’s invisible white space, or invisible formatting tags, it’s been my experience that forcing people to

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Welcome to the Post PC Era

software development concepts

Welcome to the Post PC Era

What was Microsoft’s original mission? In 1975, Gates and Allen form a partnership called Microsoft. Like most startups, Microsoft begins small, but has a huge vision – a computer on every desktop and in every home. The existential crisis facing Microsoft is that they achieved their mission years ago, at

By Jeff Atwood ·
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