software development concepts
Joel, on the merits of dogfooding: Eating your own dog food is the quaint name that we in the computer industry give to the process of actually using your own product. I had forgotten how well it worked, until a month ago, I took home a build of CityDesk (thinking
technology trends
I’ve talked about the programmer’s take on keyboard and chair, but I have yet to cover that other computing staple: the mouse. I was reminded when HMK referenced Ars Technica’s, History of the GUI: This was the mouse, invented by Douglas himself [in 1968] and built by
user experience
I was chatting with a fellow developer yesterday, who recently adopted the very cool Busy Box ASP.NET progress indicator that I recommended: We often need to provide a user message informing the user that their request is “processing.” Like the hour-glass mouse pointer lets the Windows user know the
operating systems
As I struggle to open applications on my PC, I was reminded of a few entries in Scott Hanselman’s blog: Personally I have enough crap in my start menu to fill my 1400x1060 screen... arguably only 30% of the icons represent applications, the rest are just flotsam. (May 11,
data visualization
The Edward Tufte books are well known classics now, but I distinctly remember my first encounter with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in 1995. At the time I was working for a market research company in Denver. I noticed the book sitting on the president’s desk while I
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 Religon Asunder: Religion appears in software development in numerous incarnations– as dogmatic adherence to