Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month, takes a stab at explaining why programming is so much fun. An excerpt: Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, [...]
Here’s the songlist for VisiCalc, The Musical!: A Forlorn Apple ][, I Oh Rows, Oh Columns, Oh Cells, Oh My! How Shall I Calculate My Love For Thee? 123, 123, Oh Lord Jesus, Lotus 123! Requiem For a Monochromatic Grid of Numbers Somewhere, Up in Heaven, There’s An Angel Who Can Add Really Fast I [...]
Bob Frankston’s fascinating history of the development of VisiCalc describes the simple, brilliant technique they used to vet their design: In addition to prototyping, Dan put together a reference card for users. If we couldn’t figure out how to explain a feature on the reference card we would change the program. The original method for [...]
The arrival of the Agile movement was kind of a watershed event in the history of software development, because it gave the notion of iterative development a face, and a manifesto. The industry had historically focused on an aggressively monolithic, sequential lifecycle that relied on completely finishing one stage of the process before moving on [...]
Domestic scene, 7:00am, getting ready for work. My Wife:What’s that? Me: It’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide, of course. My Wife: Why are you taking it to work with you? Me: In case any attractive women try to approach me. [Brandishing DM's Guide] Begone, Attractive Woman! The power of geek compels you! The power of geek compels [...]
Cringely has a fantastic column up on the story behind the recent executive shakeup at Apple: Tony Fadell — head of the iPod division, and probably the Father of the iPod itself — is out, and Mark Papermaster, erstwhile IBMer, is in. But the column is really about Steve Jobs, of course, his mind and [...]
Here’s the abstract from a paper about pragmatic programming via scripting languages: The author recommends that scripting, not Java, be taught first, asserting that students should learn to love their own possibilities before they learn to loathe other people’s restrictions. This is good advice about teaching people how to live, period. (via Lambda the Ultimate)
Anybody who has a nostalgic interest in vintage technology (especially games) should head over to my friend C. Nimbus’s blog, Teleblivion. Some fantastic posts there recently.
Gruber nails it: I posit that the usability and elegance of any product, software or hardware, tends to reach and seldom surpasses the level that satisfies the taste of whoever is in charge of the product. The people in charge of most free and open source software products tend to have poor taste in user [...]
Came across this post in the Opera developer blog, on why you should never use browser detection in your javascript to work around browser bugs: The TinyMCE/Opera 9.5 compatibility problem is a textbook example of why browser sniffing should be avoided at all costs. While it may seem like a quick and simple shortcut to [...]
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