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SEARCH KEYWORD -- 2011

  Less Is More

I originally assumed that open source was simply a means of producing technology. But technology is just a lovely byproduct, the real goal is social. Not all open source projects work this way, but perhaps they should. I stumbled upon this realization while maintaining fog as it grew and grew and grew. Leaving issues open seemed unbearable, but over time the volume far exceeded my ability to keep up. Over time I saw the promise of a better way, but my expectations of open source would need to a...

   Open source,Less is more,Mentoring,Bug report     2011-11-28 10:45:47

  The problem isn’t you. The problem is the problem.

A friendly reminder: The problem isn’t you. The problem is the problem. –Steven Pressfield Some stuff is just hard. We start thinking we messed up. That it’s an issue with us. But it’s not. The work is hard and the problem is hard. You need to solve the problem, not fix yourself. The quote above is from Steven Pressfield’s incredible Do the Work. The audiobook (that’s a store link) is about 90 minutes long, so it fits in a s...

   Business,Problem,Strategy     2011-12-07 08:37:29

  9 quotes that stayed with me as a developer

I find quotes inspiring, motivating or sometimes just thought provoking, so here's some of my favourites from over the years. Sometimes reading a book can have a real influence on how you write code, or how you approach a problem. Sometimes a simple quote  is enough to make me question the way I look at the code I'm writing. Or often I sit in awe about someone's so well distilled what I've known internally for ages but have never been able to enunciate.   "Design is finding t...

   Quote,programmer,programming     2011-05-27 03:34:49

  Getting started with WTL on Visual Studio 2010

Now that you have downloaded the latest WTL release (v8.1 at the time of this writing), you will find out that it doesn’t have any project wizards for Visual Studio 2010. That’s a relatively easily fix. Just go ahead and download the latest build from the repository at AppWiz.tar.gz-view=tar. Extract the .tar file and you will find the JavaScript install scripts for VS 2010: I recommend you to extract the files to the same location were you installed the WTL files. In my ca...

   C++,Windows,WTL,VS2010,Configure     2012-02-25 09:32:31

  JavaScript Is Not A Language

Recently people presented arguments for and against using CoffeeScript. I felt the argument against was pointless and obviously wrong, but I couldn't figure out why, and I thought the counterargument for was kind of toothless and irrelevant. I've figured out the real issue.The real argument for CoffeeScript is that JavaScript is not really a language.Years ago I read something which explained, in my opinion, why Lisp has never achieved the mainstream adoption its passionate advocates belie...

   JavaScript,Not a language,CoffeeScript,Model     2011-12-29 08:46:15

  Motorola : A Google company

According to Sina Tech, Motorola Mobility has changed its company logo this week. The new logo comes with new graphic design and new font design. The new logo still has the 'M' badge and "MOTOROLA". However, the color of the 'M' badge changes from the old white to the new gray and the outer ring color also changes from red to multi-color. It is more like the Google logo's color scheme. At the same time, the "MOTOROLA" string on the logo also changes from upper case letters to lower case letters...

   Motorola Mobility,Logo,Google     2013-06-26 11:40:02

  What We’re Really Afraid Of

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend who recently launched an online business, and it surprised me how our fears are never what they seem to be It went something like this: B.: I need your help. I launched my product a few months ago, but I am not getting any sales. Me: Do you have traffic? B.: Not much, about 100 visitors a month Me: Then you need to get more traffic. You probably need at least 100x that amount in your market to start seeing any sales. B.: And how do...

   Developer,Career,Idea,Refuse,Afraid     2012-01-06 02:30:42

  Want Me to Read Your Blog? Do This

It's deceptively easy to maintain traffic once you've scored that initial boost of visitor hits. In fact, one of the greatest determinations of this relies on a single make or break entry.Every blogger knows, if they look at their web analytics at all, that one of the most consistently viewed pages is the biographical entry. If it's linked on the home page or throughout the blog, the audience will invariably stay long enough to read it, at least 25%...

   Web blog,Traffic,About page,Biography     2011-12-05 13:16:37

  Common Lisp is the best language to learn programming

Now that Conrad Barski's Land of Lisp (see my review on Slashdot) has come out, I definitely think Common Lisp is the best language for kids (or anyone else) to start learning computer programming.Between Land of Lisp, David Touretzky's Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation (really great book for people new to programming, available for free) and The Little LISPer (3rd edition, editions four and up use Scheme) you have three really great resources to get started.Lisp's synta...

   Common Lisp,Kid,Programming language,First     2011-10-31 00:07:12

  Not better, but different

The most important feature of Apple products is usability--Simple, aesthetic, easy to use.Their products may not necessarily the most powerful, but they usually are the easiest to use. Following picture show a Mac (left) and a PC(right), which one looks better?Many products are trying to mimic these features, but one problem comes out:It's hard to keep a product simple while providing so many new features.If you continuously add new features to your product,  your product will become more c...

   Market positioning,Product manager     2012-05-19 13:29:20

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