One new thing since my real-world hiatus in the music industry is the prevalence of low-cost (like free) virtual machine software. They're cheap, they're stable, now we have linux and windows wherever we want, we can all own macbooks.This idea is extremely intriguing when you start applying it to deploying server software. It seems to [...]
0) Throw that dumb DDD/FRD schema you learned in college out the window.1) Gather requirements. Talk, meet, and outline as much of the system as you can with your poor human brain. Make sure you know your tools well enough to ask the right questions. Compile a list of atomic features that can be checked [...]
"Office Space" changed everything. The cubby has been a known death-wish for several years. Grey walls, beige boxes, dorky ties and coffee mugs. Screw that, right?These days you see a lot of companies steering clear of that dead and dying image by sprucing up their offices, having more fun group events, shooting toy guns at [...]
Steve Jobs’ ‘97 WWDC keynote after being rehired to rebuild apple. Back then they still said “Rhapsody” and “Networking”. The most compelling part is that his message has always been the same even through the iPhone “antennagate” flak: "Stop bitching and build a better product than us."“The reason Apple was successful is because we weren’t [...]
"But none of this answers the original question: why do we have an element? Why not an element? Or an element? Why not a hyperlink with an include attribute, or some combination of rel values? Why an element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins."http://diveintohtml5.org/past.html"Scripting is here to stay, but should [...]
I've noticed lately that you can work so hard on a problem that sometimes it actually helps to stop, drink a beer, and go at it again with whatever the beer gives you on the way. It's like there's two modes of thought, one that works with a clear head and maybe some coffee, and [...]
Javascript is the new thing. About five years ago I got a little tired of the explosion of web frameworks and moved into compiled programs and music software. Now, after a long hiatus, the web is completely different. Now we have that javascript debugger I was missing all those alert()s ago, and the same code [...]
Boy I'll tell you what, a bad job is like a bad relationship (I'll leave drawing the parallels to the following description as an exercise for the reader). At first you are excited for the prospect of something new and everything's great. Then if the stars aren't aligned for you, you start to get cranky and any possible gaps [...]
Hey commercial guys: Enough with the "beta" tag! We all know you are just trying to find a cool way to say "kinda new", but it doesn't really buy you any credibility despite the "bugs" it may have. A feature that is fully deployed as the second tab on cnn.com's from page is by definition [...]
Shark is a pretty badass profiler. I don't know much about the mach internals that let it do it's thing, but it's pretty sweet.I've been trying to get a handle on the performance of my python-based scripting engine in the audio thread, and have found setting sign posts extremely useful for a system trace. A [...]
