tl;dr: Fix bugs quickly, write features and core slowly, use github. Or just scroll through the graphs.
We’re either at, or past, my 30 year anniversary (I was a kid, can’t remember okay?) of either using, writing or managing software. I have over those years, developed some impressions and, ahem, opinions. What follows is a framework for thinking about a piece of software’s awesomeness.
For the purposes of this post we’re going to define “awesomeness” as a very general sense of “useful quality,” meaning a qualitative appraisal of the overall balance of usability, utility, and bugginess. This is inherently a qualitative [...] Continue Reading…
This is how “Spring” actually breaks down in NYC, weather-wise:
Days 1-20:
WTF? It’s still freezing. And it snowed. Again.
Days 21-40:
Yay, it’s a little warmer and the days are longer! But man, it’s raining a lot. And it’s STILL COLD.
Days 41-60:
OMG how can it rain this much? This is like being in Blade Runner.
Days 61-70:
WOW. It’s so beautiful. It’s perfect.
Days 71-90:
OMFG IT’S SO HOT I WANT TO DIE.
I witnessed an interaction at the pharmacy today:
Pharmacist: Did your insurance change?
Patient: Yes.
Pharmacist: Can I have the card?
Patient: I’ve been coming here for 20 years, you can’t look it up?
Pharmacist: Nope, sorry
At first glance, well of course he needs the second card. But at second glance, the patient is right. We have the Internet. We spend way more money than anyone else on healthcare. And we can’t figure out how to notify his pharmacy of new insurance without resorting to plastic cards with numbers on them? Really?
Cause you know what makes something official: plastic cards.
A long overdue return to technical stuff…
If you use Google Analytics and actually look at your visitor data, you will be familiar with this phenomenon, which is the reported Safari browser version in GA:
Those are in fact, not Safari version numbers, but WebKit version numbers. Now, you might just be saying, “oh, stop whining, you can just correlate those!”
But, in fact, you would be wrong: For example, the WebKit version 533.17.8 is used in both Safari 4.1 and 5.0.1. For my purposes, this is not the end of the world as I tend to care more about the WebKit [...] Continue Reading…
Okay, one other thought, via al Jazeera’s compilation of reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden. What struck me was Hamas vs. the PLA.
Hamas:
We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.
We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.
The PLA:
Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods – the violent methods – [...] Continue Reading…
While I don’t think killing Osama bin Laden is actually going to change much at this point for fighting terror, he and what he represented clearly occupied a good chunk of American and my own attention, to varying degrees, over the last decade. So, rather than pondering it for too long, I’m just going to try and get my three big thoughts out of my system so I can move on to much more productive things…
The Video Games are Pretty Accurate
As more operational details emerge, it’s pretty clear that this was movie and video game stuff. A top secret [...] Continue Reading…
I don’t usually repost (I use Twitter for links), but this is such an utterly fascinating post that it was worth calling out further. Nate Silver proposes making the 7-16 seeds in the NCAA tournament random. I completely agree with this idea, but as usual, he backs up why with math.
When 15th Is Better Than 8th: The Math Shows the Bracket Is Backward – NYTimes.com.
1. Blog lists should always be three, seven or ten items (actually I knew this already but Ned Vizzini put it in really funny terms)
2. Identity and privacy online are epic fail broken. Shit, I already knew that too.
3. Texas is dry. However much non-alcohol you think you need, drink twice that amount. I probably learned this last year, but forgot.
4. The centrally located hotel room is worth the extra money.
5. The etsy dev team is even more awesome than I thought.
6. When interactive ends, my phone stars working again, but phone calls are [...] Continue Reading…
Or someone working for him was. I was having dinner last night with my cousin (an SAP consultant) and we covered a range of topics, including lobbying and programming languages. And it struck us that laws are essentially programs.
Either you’ve already heard this analogy or you might be going “what??!?!” But it’s true. Laws and programs are both essentially linguistic expressions of applied logic: rules and processes, codified.
A program is a law, the data is a case, and the computer is a very, very strict judge. The computer really doesn’t care about intent, it’s going to do exactly what [...] Continue Reading…
In honor of Valentine’s Day…
Even if you’re not a techie or a developer, you’ve probably “Logged in via Twitter” or “Connected with Facebook.” If so, the following (in very general terms) is what’s going on when you click one of those buttons.
For the purposes of this exercise:
Girl = User in the OAuth nomenclature
Guy = Consumer in OAuth nomenclature
Friend = Provider in OAuth nomenclature. Pretend the Friend is a friend of both the Girl and Guy…
Girl to Guy: Yo, what’s up, you’re cute.
Guy, to Girl: Hey, wanna go out?
Girl, to Guy: Yeah, but I need to check you out with [...] Continue Reading…