Archive for June 2008

How I Got Started Programming

I got passed the baton by Giles Bowkett. In my flattery, I’ve decided to return the favor by aping his style. He also pinged a bunch of people, and thus far only Paul Dix and I have responded. How old were you when you started programming? I was six or seven when I began to […]

Software is political, just like everything else

I came on to keep a system alive and rewrote it from the ground up, learning OO along the way. The system solved an office politics problem; this was intentional. If you’re in your early 20s and you tell CEOs they fucked up their org chart, you’ll never get anywhere, but if you just build […]

Bill Gates finds Windows unusable.

Big surprise? Here’s an internal Microsoft email written by Bill Gates, which allegedly came to public view due to a lawsuit. From this Seattle PI blog post. It’s long, but definitely worth at least a skim: —- Original Message —- From: Bill Gates Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris […]

Informational Hygiene

A couple weeks ago, at RailsConf, I tweeted that I was skipping Joel Spolsky’s keynote and why. Judging by the few responses I got, most people took this to be a joke. It’s not. I try very hard to watch what I put into my head. To a greater or lesser degree of success. All […]

Technique or skill?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the following: Writing headlines that get dugg vs Writing headlines that get remembered Mastery of video game controllers vs Mastery of video game / problem-solving concepts Convincing people to pay for your stuff vs Creating stuff people can’t live without Google ability vs Research ability Being able to […]

Me ranting about "excellence" at RailsConf 08

Greg Pollack, of the incredibly awesome RailsEnvy (you have to watch these funny videos), cornered me briefly in the speaker’s lounge at RailsConf and asked what I’d rant about. The answer, apparently, is “excellence.” Amy Hoy at Railsconf 2008 from Gregg Pollack on Vimeo. This whole thing reminds me that I want to see a […]

Hey, why not get a shiny
Freckle Time Tracking
account?