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The ones I found significant:
1. prove that code actually works
2. low-level regression-test suite
5. demonstrate concrete progress
6. form of sample code
10. eliminate coder’s block
11. make better designs
October 19, 2006
links for 2006-10-18
October 18, 2006
links for 2006-10-17
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We can now know more by knowing less…imagination and understanding of concepts create value in today’s world.
- Learn to effectively use tools that allow you to forget.
- Free your mind to understand concepts.
- Leverage concepts against each other. -
“Homophily” is the phenomenon where birds of a feather flock together, which creates a tight circle of self-similar recommendations that support individual prejudices. Breaking out of this circle creates serendipity: pleasantly surprising the user.
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Why Paul Allen left Microsoft:
“During one of the last long nights working to deliver DOS 2.0 in 1983, I am told that Paul Allen heard Gates and Ballmer discussing his health and talking about how to get his Microsoft shares back if Allen were to die.” -
Experts suffer from knowing too much: the more facts one has, the more they can be enlisted in support of pet theories and more chains of causation can be found beguiling. Also, the future is seen to be indeterminate and the past as inevitable.
October 17, 2006
links for 2006-10-16
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“since nobody seems to know very much about making good software, it makes sense to try to distill a little wisdom when possible.”
1] Fail Fast
2] Write Less Code (and DRY)
3] Computer Programs Are For People
4] Do The Right Thing
5] Reduce State
September 22, 2006
links for 2006-09-21
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While everyone will agree that addressing the cause is the best way to get a different effect, it is rarely put in practice … because effects are easily seen and causes are frequently hidden from view, they are completely misdiagnosed as a result.
September 21, 2006
links for 2006-09-20
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The less you identify work with employment, the easier it becomes to start a startup: when you see your career as a series of different types of work, instead of a lifetime’s service to a single employer, there’s less risk in starting your own company.
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Forms of cost-center technology:
*) Differentiating: something that makes your business desirable over your competitors
*) Non-differentiating: infrastructure upon which the above is built.
Open Source is the key to spending less on non-differentiators -
In Extreme Interviewing, you recreate the actual work environment with the existing team involved, with an equal focus on personal/technical skills. Reminds me of the quote: “you hire a juggler after seeing him juggle, but not so for a programmer.”
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Great managers define what success will look like, and why that success will be meaningful, but then they get out of the way, allowing people creative license and the freedom in decision-making to motivate themselves in attaining that success.
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The effectiveness of groups, teamwork, collaboration, and consensus is largely a myth. In many cases, individuals do much better on their own .. groups often breed false confidence that leads to unsound decisions which no one would have made on their own.
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A good discussion of top 5 reasons why people quit
1. Money
2. Work is not challenging
3. Too many challenges
4. Company atmosphere
5. The small stuff
September 20, 2006
links for 2006-09-19
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Winning is not the opposite of losing all the time. Sometimes, it can be a bigger loss than losing.
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If I see something I don’t like, I try to change it, and if I can’t I change my position of looking at it: seeing it from a different angle I might be able to change it; or I might find some good in it that I can use, which might make it change itself.
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The trick to doing this is by quantifying our experiences ie. measure how much enjoyment we hope to get by indulging in our distraction and then diminish that enjoyment in our minds to a level low enough that it is no longer appealing.
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How does a job candidate handle embarrassing, possibly unethical questions from a hiring authority?
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What’s particularly fascinating is how the market development contradicts the received wisdom about the evolution of technology markets: that technologies evolve from proprietary “integrated architectures” to open “modular architectures” as they mature.
December 27, 2005
links for 2005-12-27
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Q: Why are people so uncomfortable with Wikipedia, Google and that whole blog thing?
A: Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the micro scale for optimization at the macro scale. -
Television is bad for your brain, but TV shows (via DVD/bittorrent) can be good for your brain. Some Reasons:
1) TV Addiction is a distinct possibility
2) TV News reduces left-brain logical thinking
3) Having TV in background causes “brain drain”(tags: television health)
December 26, 2005
links for 2005-12-26
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interesting idea on overcoming food shortage by using a series of high-rises in urban areas where fruit, vegetables and livestock can be raised by utilizing greenhouse methods and recycled resources year-round, allowing cities to become self-sufficient.(tags: environment agriculture)
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Photographer Jim Brandenburg’s challenge: Make a portrait of the north woods in upper Minnesota over the ninety days between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, with one, and only one, exposure per day. Amazing photos!(tags: photography)
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Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a liberal license allowing for free incorporation.
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VC Fred Wilson says its high time the consumer electronics industry joins PCs and the internet in becoming flexible vis-a-vis consumers and entrepreneurs: its nearly impossible to take control of one’s experience and impossible to innovate in this sector.(tags: consumer electronics)
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talks about the “corporate” persona often assumed by startups and how it prevents relationship-building. “I slowly realized the importance of relationship building, especially with customers and how powerful it can be as a competitive advantage.”
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makes the point that the value of a social network is also determined by the strength of the connections between the people in it. gives examples that on Amazon individual reviewers don’t matter but on Skype, individual people you talk to do matter.
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In the long run, the value of a social network is not only determined by the number of people in it, but in the ability for the network to monetize them. It is much easier to do that if you are vertically focussed rather than horizontally focussed.
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presents four ways in which del.icio.us-like services can generate revenue: 1) Contextual Ads in a Social Search Engine 2) Selling “Tag-Stream Data” 3) Advertorial Tags 4) Other Contextual Advertising based on User Value
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Practical entrepreneurs don’t follow a big vision but look for a low-risk market where one’s skills can be applied. The 4 rules: 1) choose a fragmented market 2) sell to business not consumers 3) clear and simple revenue model 4) eat your own dog food
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discusses the “Edit & Continue” feature in Visual Studio in the context of whether such tool advances are making programmers more sloppy. Also, hypothesizes that additional checks are no guarantee and may paradoxically increase the probability of errors.(tags: programming quality)
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“In product management, the things you choose not to do are at least as important as the things you choose to do. Though it might seem like adding features is always a good thing, there are actually tradeoffs being made with each feature added.”
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an interesting post on what game developers should ask for in retail contracts.
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how filters/aggregators like Squidoo help micro-ISVs get attention and showcase their expertise and translate it into revenue.
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A list of all projects at IBM Research. Most of them have papers and documentation, and looking at them might spark off an idea..
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a great presentation on how Microsoft has changed the UI in Office 12 to make it more usable, essentially an exercise in managing complexity.
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a very fascinating story about how changes and trends in specific vertical industries can happen, giving the example of the centuries-old ice industry which is being forced to change in a disruptive way due to innovation.
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Ten tips for businesses analyzing the impact of a decision to use an open-source project. Quote: “Don’t be an Open Source ostrich. Open Source software is not likely to go away nor are you likely to avoid it. As always, “be prepared” is the best motto.
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a list of Google search operators, which actually pretty handy for repetitive searches that you make into shortcuts.
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“The Deep Web is the gigantic source of information stored deep down in databases – rendered through DHTML and not accessible to standard crawlers. In many cases, they actually do not even exist until a user asks a question by filling up fields in a form”
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In the light of Alexa (an Amazon-owned search company) opening up access to its index via an API at cheap rates to anyone who wants it, the index of a search engine is fast turning into a commodity.
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Discusses how simply reducing the complexity or number of steps marginally can lead to market dominance (eg. Google, Skype). Also discusses how reducing the barriers to entry make your products much more attractive.
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very interesting article which talks about competition in the software components market, and how it impacts the choices you make in development — essentially leading to analysis paralysis. also discusses the problems inherent in internal code reuse.
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good tips on overcoming fear and achieving success. “While fear embedded in the unconscious mind can sabotage our success, the reverse is also true. You can use your unconscious mind to influence your thinking in order to achieve your goals.”(tags: self_improvement)
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a very good summary of the conversation about how to make money from the Long Tail. a must read!(tags: longtail insightful)
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Can humor skills be developed? Yes, absolutely. Steve Pavalina gives some extremely good tips on how to develop them.
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how normal people act when committed people set out to do extraordinary things, taking examples from the author’s life. Very inspiring, makes you feel that you missed a lot by not acting when it was needed.(tags: motivation self_improvement)
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With bottlenecks removed and the costs of production dropping, IT Consulting looks like the Long Tail of services. The future of services is in making lots of small engagements pay, rather than shooting only for the big ones.
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discusses the fundamental tension of the internet: between convergence/anti-convergence, bundling/unbundling & centralization/decentralization and suggests that if all content is “unbundled”, the cultural products subsidized by commercial junk may go away
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quotes Bill Gates: “Google’s business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money, which it keeps with itself” and makes the point that there’s too much profit right now in online advertising for Google, which isn’t going to last.
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explains in numbers how picking Rails over Java affects the bids he puts in for consulting jobs (considering only the actual programming part of the bid). The approach that Stuart takes in differentiating between the two is quite interesting.
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Microsoft’s Robert Scoble was concerned about the exodus of developers that are leaving .NET for Ruby on Rails, and asked for feedback on the reasons. Follow the comments/trackbacks for a very interesting discussion.
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TinyMCE is a open-source web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control. It has the ability to convert HTML TEXTAREA fields or other HTML elements to editor instances and is very easy to integrate into other CMS systems.
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Nice CSS technique for replacing multiple-select boxes with a scrollable series of checkboxes.
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an explanation of what all 99s in uptime measurement really mean in terms of hours. also recommends two rules for on-demand service providers: 1) Take steps to keep users informed 2) Be upfront about service levels(tags: webservice availability)
Humor from Overheard In The Office
I really love Overheard In The Office. Here are some recent gems that I particularly liked:
Agent #1: Why is that dog wearing a “W” on its head?
Agent #2: That’s not a “W”; it’s obviously an “M.” It’s just upside down.
Bystander: Um…those are reindeer antlers.
Boss: I’m getting nailed to the wall here, guys! C’mon! I’m not Jesus Christ! Help me out!
Manager: Here you go.
Employee: Oh, thank goodness. This is what she’s looking for…I’m so glad you found it. I would have had to redo it right now.
Manager: I found it on your desk.
CSR #1: What does IT stand for?
CSR #2: Idiotic tendencies.
CSR #1: Oh, so that’s why we forward them all the stupid questions.
CSR on phone: Sir, would you mind slowing down just a little bit? You’re really giving me a lot of information, and it’s not really registering in my brain because I’m still trying to type in all the other crap you told me.
Worker: So the Christmas party is mandatory?
Boss: Of course not, but if you don’t show you’ll probably be ostracized.
Worker: …And I have to sign a waiver to drink?
Boss: Do you think a company of lawyers would let everyone drink, then drive, and not cover their asses?
Co-worker #1: Where is my breakfast burrito?
Co-worker #2: Sorry bud, I totally forgot to order you one.
Co-worker #1: Next time I shoot my .357 magnum at the range…I’m going to draw your face on the target.
VP: There is only so much you can do with one hand.
Co-worker: I’m not going to touch that.
VP: We have to create the problem that the customer will want to solve.
Co-worker #1: I’m really hot.
Co-worker #2: I’m turning the heat down to 90. If anyone’s cold then they can go into [Jessica]’s office, but first you have to take off your clothes because it’s a sauna in there.
Co-worker #3: You shouldn’t tell people to take their clothes off before going into [Jessica]’s office.
Worker #1: Do you have any time available to meet on Thursday?
Worker #2: It will be pretty tough; I have back to back meetings all day.
Worker #1: How about 11AM?
Worker #2: Okay, I have nothing scheduled at all between 9AM and 5PM.
Warning: Incoming Links
I’ve been going through my backlog of links on bloglines, and I’ve bookmarked well over 30 links, so expect that the next post will have a lot of links to read through!
I tend to put description about the links in the del.icio.us entry itself, instead of creating a blog entry for every link (that would be too many entries!) and a duplication of effort. I also treat it as a challenge to produce a 255-character elevator pitch for the article. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t 
What do you think is the best way to go about it?
I’ll be posting how I use del.icio.us and bloglines to find good articles on the web within a few days.
