user experience
When working with users, I am frequently reminded of this conversation in David O. Russell’s movie Three Kings: 0:00 /0:51 1× GATES What is the most important thing in life? TROY What are you talking about? GATES What’s the most important thing? TROY Respect? GATES Too
software development concepts
Although you eventually outgrow them, any developer worth his or her salt bears the scars of a thousand tiny religious wars. It’s an occupational hazard, as Steve McConnell notes in Thou Shalt Rend Software and Religon Asunder: Religion appears in software development in numerous incarnations– as dogmatic adherence to
programming languages
I’m currently whipping up a mini-API for the BetaBrite-specific subset of the Alpha Sign Communications Protocol. Naturally, I want it to be easy to use and understandable for other developers – a classic usability problem. How do you approach usability when your audience is other developers? The answer is, unsurprisingly,
vb.net
It’s amusing that the very people defending VB.NET are, ironically, illustrating precisely why VB.NET is in such trouble: I just want to make it clear that I am one MVP that does NOT intend to sign this petition about VB. And by the way, my background is
programming languages
An oldie but a goodie, courtesy of Jeroen van den Bos: A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?
programming languages
How do you recognize talented software developers in a 30 minute interview? There’s a roundtable article on this topic at Artima Developer with some good ideas from a group of well known developers: * Explore an area of expertise * Have them critique something * Ask them to solve a problem (but
software development concepts
It’s the coolest hack in years – The Sound of iPod: I got an iPod for Christmas. The ipodlinux project was one of the main reasons for my choice and so I started exploring the iPod as far as I was able to. I patched the bootloader and got some
programming languages
In Revenge of the Right Brain, Daniel Pink sees a future where being technologically savvy isn’t enough: Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe.
software development concepts
I’m currently building up my new Pentium M system for HTPC duties. This means doing a bench (open air) install, clean OS build and Prime95 torture test burn in. I also flash the BIOS to the latest revision from the manufacturer’s support page. Sometimes the motherboards are fairly
regular expressions
I’m a huge fan of regular expressions; they’re the Swiss army knife of web-era development tools. I’m always finding new places to use them in my code. Although other developers I work with may be uncomfortable with regular expressions at first, I eventually convert them to the
software development concepts
In Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef, Joel derides the least common denominator effect of formal methodologies: Mystery: why is it that some of the biggest IT consulting companies in the world do the worst work? 1. Some things need talent to do really well. 2. It’s hard to
software development concepts
Richard Mansfield has a bone to pick with object oriented programming: Certainly for the great majority of programmers – amateurs working alone to create programs such as a quick sales tax utility for a small business or a geography quiz for Junior – the machinery of OOP is almost always far more