It’s almost 2005 and I can tell you, right this second, most of the keystrokes to format a document in Wordstar. I could also navigate a DOS-based version of XTree in my sleep. Additionally, I could explain to you the color scheme I chose for Xtree and weigh the pros’n’cons of said color scheme against… more
Fez. Fez is a senior engineer who works for me. He’s fictional, but you know Fez. He’s the guy who wrote that piece of code nine million years ago that everyone is dependent on, but no one knows what exactly it does because Fez didn’t bother to comment a single line… oh yeah and he… more
A recent Slashdot article about, yet another, start-up founded by Stanford grads got me reminiscing about the good old days when databases where in your face… and… fun? I was a Borland barbarian back in the late 80s and 90s and we had a head full of steam and we had a crazy Frenchman steering… more
Designing phenomenal UI is a thankless, unfair task which is full of contradictions. Let’s go over the list of goals for good UI and notice how screwed our UI designers are. Good UI should: Be easy to learn, but powerful to use Be pleasing to the eye, yet not annoying Integrate with a user’s natural… more
I’m scratching my head regarding my recent upgrade to Movable Type 3.0. Back in April, it became fashionable to rip on Six Apart and their apparent desire to make money as a company. Rabid discussions ensued regarding their pricing and, to their credit, the general agreement is that they’ve nailed their revised pricing, but still… more
The current gig has presented me with a technical scenario I’ve never been in. I’m managing engineers who are writing in a language that I’ve never programmed in Cocoa… Objective C. Yes, many of the lessons of Java, C, and C++ do apply, but when I sit down to do a code review ALL THE… more
As a manager in any software engineering organization, you’re going to be subject to a lot of interpersonal angst amongst the team members. You’ll be walking to lunch and Engineer A is going to be ranting and raving about Engineer B on another team… “Man that guy bugs me. Have you seen his code? Wow!… more
The latest shareware utility I’ve actually paid for is LaunchBar. This utility, which I’ve already talked about, sits in your menu bar and allows you to launch applications, web pages, documents, system preferences by typing their respective names via the keyboard. Frequent readers will know of my hatred of mouse. It is a imprecise tool… more
