social media
Is anyone else as sick as I am of all the mainstream news coverage on Twitter? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Twitter fan, and I’ve been a user since 2006. To me, it’s a form of public instant messaging – yet another way to maximize the
unix
Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS is fascinating reading. Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson (pictured at
motivation
There’s an inherent paradox in motivating programmers. I think this Geek Hero Comic illustrates it perfectly: It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed even in myself. Nothing motivates like having another programmer tell you they’re rewriting your code because it sucks. Dave Thomas has talked about this for
open source
I’m a big advocate of learning on the battlefield. And that certainly includes what may be the most epic battle of them all: open source software. Contribute to an open-source project. There are thousands, so pick whatever strikes your fancy. But pick one and really dig in, become an
software development
Are there any programming jobs you wouldn’t take? Not because the jobs didn’t pay enough, had poor benefits, or limited upside – but because the work itself made you uncomfortable? Consider the tale of one freshmeat.net writer: Back in the old days (let’s say 1996), I was
software development
I’ll always remember WordPerfect as the quintessential white text on blue screen application. For a period from about 1985 to 1992, WordPerfect was the most popular word processing program in the world on virtually every computing platform. I remember it well; the very concept of word processing was synonymous
software development
Have you ever considered paying for, or sponsoring, a * bug fix * new feature * plugin * small tweak to existing functionality ... for software that you use? I don’t mean waiting for a new release of the software, which will contain a bunch of new features you may or may not care
puzzle
Have you ever been to an interview for a programming job where they asked you one of those interview puzzle questions? I have. The one I got was: How much of your favorite brand of soda is consumed in this state? And no, the correct answer is not who cares,
c++
Back in September 2008, I mentioned that we were spawning a new process. Well, that process arrived today, and its id is Henry Burton Atwood. We’re starting him off right with a little light reading. You may recognize this book from Apple’s Mac vs PC ad series, specifically,
productivity
As a software developer, how do you sharpen your saw? Sharpening the saw is shorthand for anything you do that isn’t programming, necessarily, but (theoretically) makes you a better programmer. It’s derived from the Covey book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There’s a guy who
software development
I haven’t had the opportunity to talk at all about Google’s new Chrome browser yet. Which is a shame, because it’s easily the best web browser I’ve ever used. If it wasn’t for the complete and utter lack of an add-in ecosystem, I’d switch
html
The web is, to put it charitably, a rather forgiving place. You can feed web browsers almost any sort of HTML markup or JavaScript code and they’ll gamely try to make sense of what you’ve provided, and render it the best they can. In comparison, most programming languages