Pick a budget
People are a little weird when they’re starting a software project. They will talk about what they want it to do for hours. They will write documents about it. Schedule meetings about it. They will...
View ArticleThe problem with “never”
Okay, somebody needs to say it: Eric Raymond just said something really stupid: That’s wrong. Open systems are better, always. Cisco has just provided us with a perfect lesson in why that sentence is...
View ArticleYou should use Core Data
In collecting feedback on my previous post discussing the new hotness of NSIncrementalDataStore, I seem to have unexpectedly lit a fuse. On the one hand, that blog post has spawned a dozen new...
View ArticleLet’s talk about Sparrow
Everybody’s weighing in on the Sparrow acquisition. Marco says if you want great indie developers, pay them well. Eleza says “that’s what I did!”. Selligy says that Apple should do something. Matt...
View ArticleA rebuttal: the coming civil war on general-purpose computing
Cory Doctorow gave a talk recently about how we are descending towards a dystopian future, which was based on an earlier talk with largely the same premise. I doubt it. The premise is sound enough:...
View ArticleShut up and ship
The startup community operates in a world of “get out of the building.” Of “write more specs“. Of asking “should this project even be built“? This converges on a culture of “everything except the...
View ArticleThe way forward
One of the remarkable things about computers is how quickly things change. Of course, all good computer scientists get drilled into their heads at a young age that Moore’s Law will not fix a poor...
View ArticleCracking the Observer code: the (disappointing) cryptanalysis of Fringe
I’ve been getting caught up on Fringe lately. They are kinda notorious for encoding (fairly easily-decodable) messages into the shows, and famously their glyphs have been solved through...
View ArticleOpinions are free: advice is expensive
Something interesting has been going on. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s becoming cheaper and easier for anyone to distribute content these days. This inconvenient truth is leading to the death of...
View ArticleThings I don’t understand: Fake Inbox Zero
I don’t understand Fake Inbox Zero. It’s the idea that your inbox should always have zero messages. As distinct from Actual Inbox Zero: “It’s about how to reclaim your email, your attention, and...
View ArticleHow Not to Install Windows on your Mac’s External Disk
Continuing my N-part series on “how not to do useful things” that tells you nothing useful about how to solve your problems, I present to you: how not to install Windows on an external drive on your...
View ArticleBroken Promises
James Coglan published an article the other day about how node.js missed the boat with promises. I don’t know much about node.js, but I do know about promises. And they didn’t miss much of a boat. So...
View ArticleCompanies as protagonists
An experiment: this blog post is available in audio form, for playing along or listening later. Listen later Every good story has a protagonist. And if you are writing or reading a story, whether it...
View ArticleGit branch / merge: not as easy as advertised
Here’s what I keep reading: With distributed version control, merges are easy and work fine. So you can actually have a stable branch and a development branch, or create long-lived branches for your QA...
View ArticleMobile web apps are slow
Every so often I run into people who tell me that web apps have gotten a bit of an unfair reputation–”they can be just as good as native apps!” they tell me. (Usually the “bad” reputation is the work...
View ArticleI’ve changed my mind on HTML5 DRM
Of course, we all know that DRM is broken and bad. But until very recently, I’ve been persuaded by sort of an economic argument. I’ll let cynicalkane explain it to you: The market problem is that...
View ArticleNSA-proof your e-mail in 2 hours
You may be concerned that the NSA is reading your e-mail. Is there really anything you can do about it though? After all, you don’t really want to move off of GMail / Google Apps. And no place you...
View ArticleHey programmers, we need to talk.
Hey guys. Thanks for coming to this meeting on such short notice. There’s coffee in the back. Did somebody spot the token recruiter yet? And show him the door? Okay thanks, now it’s just us. So I’ve...
View ArticleWhy mobile web apps are slow
I’ve had an unusual number of interesting conversations spin out of my previous article documenting that mobile web apps are slow. This has sparked some discussion, both online and IRL. But sadly,...
View ArticleThe part of the FISC NSA decision you missed
The EFF managed to get one of the FISC court rulings declassified: NSA’s targeting and minimization procedures, as the government proposes to apply them to MCTs as to which the “active user” is not...
View Article