web development
Due to popular demand one person’s request, I added for sale searching to my existing craigslist.org all-city search page. I also made a few other minor improvements: * Searching of Jobs or For Sale items * Selection of subcategories * Age of posts in days is shown as an offset from
asp.net
At work, we have the luxury of assuming that everyone’s on an intranet. So when it comes to identity management on our ASP.NET websites, NTLM authentication is the go-to solution. Why trouble the user with Yet Another Login Dialog when you can leverage the built in NTLM functionality
programming languages
In Maciej Ceglowski’s cutting counterpoint to Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters, he cites a key difference between software development and painting: writing software doesn’t get you laid. There’s nothing whatsoever distinctive about the analogy to painters, except that Paul Graham likes to paint, and would like
user experience
I had a great time at today’s Raleigh MSDN Code Camp. There’s nothing better than geeking out with a bunch of guys and gals who are as passionate about this stuff as you are! For anyone who couldn’t attend, here’s a a local copy of my
software development concepts
If anyone reading this is local to Raleigh-Durham and signed up for the 2005 Raleigh Code Camp at NC State, fair warning: I’ll be presenting there. The speaker schedule is packed with interesting sessions. Mine is on User Friendly Exception Handling Strategies at 10:15am. I haven’t had
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 Religion Asunder: Religion appears in software development in numerous incarnations– as dogmatic adherence to
ui
I somehow doubt this is what Joyce Kilmer was thinking of when he wrote the poem, Trees: I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. It’s unfortunate that the TreeView is one of the standard widgets in a usability designer’s toolkit, because trees
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,
keyboard shortcuts
Like Scott Hanselman, I view the mouse as an optional computer accessory.* Manly coders love the smell of compilation in the morning and we know that speed = keyboard. A mouse? C’mon. That’s so teenage girls can pick emoticons in AOL Instant Messenger. And for flash “developers.” Us tough
software development
I’ve always discouraged ivory tower development – teams where developers are cloistered away for years in their high towers, working on technical software wizardry. These developers have no idea how users will respond to their software they’re creating. They probably couldn’t even tell you the last time they
ide
In VB.NET vs C#, round two, I realized that choice of IDE has a far bigger impact on productivity than which language you choose. Lately I’ve started to think the relationship between language and IDE is even more profound: the future of programming languages isn’t a language