usability
Writing code? That’s the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use – now that’s the hard stuff. I’ve been a long time fan of Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think. Not just because it’
programming languages
I find it difficult to believe, but the reports keep pouring in via Twitter and email: many candidates who show up for programming job interviews can’t program. At all. Consider this recent email from Mike Lin: The article Why Can’t Programmers... Program? changed the way I did interviews.
programming languages
I apologize for the scarcity of updates lately. There have been two things in the way: 1. Continuing fallout from International Backup Awareness Day, which meant all updates to Coding Horror from that point onward were hand-edited text files. Which, believe me, isn’t nearly as sexy as it… uh…
software development concepts
I’ve been unhappy with every single piece of software I’ve ever released. Partly because, like many software developers, I’m a perfectionist. And then, there are inevitably… problems: * The schedule was too aggressive and too short. We need more time! * We ran into unforeseen technical problems that forced
programming languages
Let’s face it: we all write bad code. But not every programmer does something about the bad code they’re polluting the world with, day in and day out. There’s a whole universe of possibilities: * Follow the instructions on the paint can * Become a software apprentice * Get a
regex
Among programmers of any experience, it is generally regarded as A Bad Ideatm to attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions. How bad of an idea? It apparently drove one Stack Overflow user to the brink of madness: You can’t parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can’t
software development concepts
If the internet has perfected anything, it’s the art of the crappy, phoned-in, half-assed email “interview.” For all those who have bemoaned the often pathetic state of internet journalism, when it comes to interviews, you’re largely correct. The purpose of most of these interviews is quick and dirty
programming languages
Xanadu, a global hypertext publishing system, is the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. It has been in development for more than 30 years. This long gestation period may not put it in the same category as the Great Wall of China, which was under construction
programming languages
The Gamasutra article Dirty Coding Tricks is a fantastic read. One part of it in particular rang true for me. Consider the load of pain I found myself in when working on a conversion of a 3D third person shooter from the PC to the original PlayStation. Now, the PS1
microsoft bob
Do you remember Microsoft Bob? If you do, you probably remember it as an intensely marketed but laughable failure – what some call the “number one flop” at Microsoft. There’s no question that Microsoft Bob was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. But that’s the funny thing about failures
web programming
Michael Braude decries the popularity of web programming: The reason most people want to program for the web is that they’re not smart enough to do anything else. They don’t understand compilers, concurrency, 3D or class inheritance. They haven’t got a clue why I’d use an
programming languages
I’d like to talk to you about ducts. Wait a minute. Strike that. I meant COBOL. The Common Business Oriented Language is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary as the language that is everywhere and nowhere at once: As a result, today COBOL is everywhere, yet is largely unheard of among