technology trends

A Visit With Alan Kay

programming languages

A Visit With Alan Kay

Alan Kay is one of my computing heroes. All this stuff we do every day as programmers? Kay had a hand in inventing a huge swath of it: Computer scientist Kay was the leader of the group that invented object-oriented programming, the graphical user interface, 3D computer graphics, and ARPANET,

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Overnight Success: It Takes Years

programming languages

Overnight Success: It Takes Years

Paul Buchheit, the original lead developer of Gmail, notes that the success of Gmail was a long time in coming: We starting working on Gmail in August 2001. For a long time, almost everyone disliked it. Some people used it anyway because of the search, but they had endless complaints.

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Programming: Love It or Leave It

programming languages

Programming: Love It or Leave It

In a recent Joel on Software forum post Thinking of Leaving the Industry, one programmer wonders if software development is the right career choice in the face of broad economic uncertainty: After reading the disgruntled posts here from long time programmers and hearing so much about ageism and outsourcing, I’

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Gifts for Geeks: 2008 Edition, Sort Of

technology trends

Gifts for Geeks: 2008 Edition, Sort Of

I was going to post another edition of Gifts for Geeks, as I did in 2006 and 2007, but my heart’s just not in it this year. I don’t know if it’s the global economic apocalypse, or what, but I’m having a hard time mustering the

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Avoiding The Uncanny Valley of User Interface

user experience

Avoiding The Uncanny Valley of User Interface

Are you familiar with the uncanny valley? No, not that uncanny valley. Well, on second thought, yes, that uncanny valley. In 1978, the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori noticed something interesting: The more humanlike his robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. If

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Tending Your Software Garden

software development

Tending Your Software Garden

Software: do you write it like a book, grow it like a plant, accrete it like a pearl, or construct it like a building? As Steve McConnell notes in Code Complete 2, there’s no shortage of software development metaphors: A confusing abundance of metaphors has grown up around software

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Feeding My Graphics Card Addiction

graphics cards

Feeding My Graphics Card Addiction

Hello, my name is Jeff Atwood, and I’m an addict. I’m addicted... to video cards. In fact, I’ve been addicted since 1996. Well, maybe a few years earlier than that if you count some of the classic 2D accelerators. But the true fascination didn’t start until

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Remembering the Dynabook

conceptual design

Remembering the Dynabook

My recent post on netbooks reminded me of Alan Kay’s original 1972 Dynabook concept (pdf). We now have some reasons for wanting the DynaBook to exist. Can it be fabricated from currently invented technology in quantities large enough to bring a selling (or renting) price within reach of millions

By Jeff Atwood ·
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HCI Remixed

hci

HCI Remixed

I like to take one or two books with me when I travel, and one of the books I chose for this trip is HCI Remixed. Sometimes the books I choose are a bust. Fortunately that didn’t happen this time. HCI Remixed covers all the major milestones in the

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Programming Is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!

A few months ago, Dare Obasanjo noticed a brief exchange my friend Jon Galloway and I had on Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter makes it unusually difficult to follow conversations, but Dare outlines the gist of it in Developers, Using Libraries is not a Sign of Weakness: The problem Jeff was trying

By Jeff Atwood ·
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microsoft

Bill Gates and Code Complete

By now I’m sure you’ve at least heard of, if not already seen, the new Windows Vista advertisements featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. They haven’t been well received, to put it mildly, but the latest commercial is actually not bad in its longer 4 minute version:

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Deadlocked!

multi-threading

Deadlocked!

You may have noticed that my posting frequency has declined over the last three weeks. That’s because I’ve been busy building that Stack Overflow thing we talked about. It’s going well so far. Joel Spolsky also seems to think it’s going well, but he’s one

By Jeff Atwood ·
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