“The only thing that everyone seems to agree upon is how stupid all the other programmers are.”
Not everyone understands scaling for the masses.
Treating the entire visual interface of a program as data input to another program that modifies the original behavior.
Results of a survey of over 3000 developers, regarding their approach to OO software design.
If crap code is an unavoidable problem for the software industry, maybe the solution lies in trying to change the nature of the code, rather than trying to change the people who write the code.
What does time to market really mean? Beyond face value, Time to Twitter sets up a grotesque caricature of the real evolution of Twitter as an idea. Going by the original sketches, Twitter was conceived…
It gets tiresome when every time someone publishes an article about this issue, a stream of misogynistic trolls start babbling and complaining. You fucking assholes are just proving the point…
I hate to agree with grouchy old Dijkstra, but unfortunately now it's impossible to deny: BASIC is what killed my ability to be a truly great programmer. Dijkstra was right, GOTO completely rots your…
Finally, the announcement that everyone's been waiting for: Rasmus and the Zend team have agreed to make an official announcement to discontinue support for PHP4. I've been using PHP5 almost exclusively…
Microsoft have announced plans to release a stripped down consumer version of their Xbox 360 development tools, hoping to spawn the emergence of a massive network of homemade game content - the…
Clay Shirky on moderation strategies: Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn't realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding…
Francis Till comes down full fist slinging on Governments & Open Source, which turns out to be little more than another thinly veiled attack on the Green Party. Beyond the hot air and apparent…
The huge amount of public anticipation and scrutiny of their activities is not going to be particularly helpful.
The EFF examines the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, and concludes that Apple is acting as a jealous and arbitrary feudal lord.
Twitter as performance; Dean Allen ruminates on the end of an experiment.
Many programmers and those with ears tuned in to murmurs from the dark side of the finance industry will have heard the recent story involving Goldman Sachs.
Software development is hard. A lot of people like the idea of couching this difficulty in a form of explanation by analogy. The most common comparisons are generally the most facile and glib, and…
For quick and dirty programs... Paul Graham has released an early version of Arc, his ongoing project to develop a Lisp dialect suiting a minimalist taste in programming style. Never one to shirk…
In Hearing without listening, 37Signals screws up, then admits what they did wrong and how they fixed it. In the end, it's just a matter of several weeks downtime before the application is working…
Not for the weak of heart, but the prospect of wrangling the call database with Django is a tantalizing hint of things to come...
“Only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers.”
People are starting to wise up to the distortions of bubble math surrounding the recent rush of interest in socially oriented websites steaming ahead under the banner of Web 2.0, but it is interesting…
Trapped in the Neue Zealand ghetto region, and can't even fly to Auckland at the moment, let alone San Diego... But I'm keenly interested in a couple of presentations in particular: Firstly,…
This piece landed in my inbox twice today, and immediately caught my attention. It's well written, and makes some excellent points that I think are exactly on the mark. Paul Graham has elaborated…
The real reason why nobody is right, even when they are.
A new skillset for interactive designers, who must now take direct evidence into account with every design variation that affects user flows.
“Every time we went down the ‘wrong’ path, we learned something concrete — if not about software than at least about people”
After recently discussing the widely underestimated importance of visual programming, it’s great to see research like Visual Programming Environments For Kids.
Dog Bites Man Month. Or does it? The criticism is sharp, but I'm not sure how deep it cuts. Anecdotal evidence is no less valid than statistical reasoning if it is widely understood to be advice that…
It just wouldn't be fair to ask where are the women in open source and criticize open source usability without providing some kind of summary of how we can do something about it. Humanized…
Raganwald dissects the misguided metaphor from a software process perspective. I have come to believe that these kinds of problems are even more prevalent in the web development world than in…
This week I've got an interesting side project, working as a mentor with a group of MCS students who are learning agile methods the useful way - by actually working on a real project. Our team…
No programming language is appropriate for every situation.
I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit. - Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker On rereading this, and pondering…
Eyebeam R&D have just announced the release of OGLE, a graphics extractor that intercepts OpenGL messages, and allows users to capture and save 3D data dumps that can be repurposed in a variety…