software development concepts
Of all the professional hubris I’ve observed in software developers, perhaps the greatest sin of all is that we consider ourselves typical users. We use the computer obsessively, we know a lot about how it works, we even give advice to friends and relatives. We are experts. Who could
user experience
As a student of UI design, I was always intrigued by the user interface used in You Don’t Know Jack. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s a demented in-your-face quiz show game. The first version was released circa 1995, and at the time, I don’
user experience
God bless whoever at Microsoft decided to build Calculator Plus, an unsupported free upgrade for calc.exe. On the other hand... who decided it was a good idea to skin the UI by default? My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing! Now compare that “upgraded” UI to the windows default,
user experience
Why is it, 10 years after the publication of Alan Cooper’s seminal, About Face, applications still regularly present this dialog to me? Cooper said it best on page 136: It is possible to argue that users have come to expect this behavior; that its absence would cause experienced users
gui design patterns
With all this talk of high-falutin’ coding design patterns, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more sites that cover GUI design patterns, like welie.com*. What a great site! Consider the iPod: it’s a 2.5″ hard drive, strapped to a battery and a LCD, that plays MP3
programming languages
I mentioned in a previous post that I recommended Andrew Hunt of pragmatic programmer fame to speak at our group offsite. He happens to live in the area, which makes it very cost effective. I have to admit I didn’t know much about these guys until I ran across
software development concepts
It’s because I’m so humble, obviously. Allow me to illustrate with an excerpt from the personal character chapter of McConnell’s Code Complete 2.0: The intense inwardness of programming makes personal character especially important. You know how difficult it is to put in eight concentrated hours in
user experience
I just posted a new article on Code Project, User Friendly Exception Handling. This is a set of classes that deal with unhandled and handled exceptions through a consistent UI, as presented in Alan Cooper’s great book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design. Anyway, at the time
productivity
I found an interesting blog post about a small, informal multiple monitor productivity study. A number of developers, with some nudging from me, have gravitated to multiple monitor setups over the last year. Based on that experience, I wholeheartedly agree with the study survey results: * On average, people would much
user experience
Like any self-respecting geek, I’m a card-carrying member of the Tivo cult. I’ll admit, I have lost some interest in the box since Tivo has taken such a hard-line approach to digital rights management (DRM) – providing virtually no way to copy the shows I’ve recorded to DVD,
.net
You’d think someone would have written a decent, generic .NET About Box by now. Well, if it’s out there, I couldn’t find it! The About Box isn’t an essential part of any application, but my research (and practical experience) indicates it has two key uses: * For
programming languages
This list was last updated February 2025. Why are updates to my reading list so rare? Because computers change a lot in 10 years, but people don’t. To make better software, you need to understand how people work, and that is what the books I recommend tend to focus