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  The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible

Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which things go in which bucket is critical to fully understanding how to make something useful. Shouldn’t everything be obvious? Unless you’re making a product that just does one thing – like a paperclip, for example – everything won’t be obvious. You have to make tough calls about what needs to be obvious, ...

   Software,Obvious,Easy,Possible,Requirements     2011-11-30 11:48:12

  Live in Beijing and Thinking about Starting a Tech Company? Read. This. Post. Now.

The Disrupt Beijing Hackathon starts in a little more than 24 hours, and we’ve been working hard over the last few days to make it even more of a no-brainer for local Beijing developers to attend.In addition to the chance to be the next GroupMeor win valuable prizes, we have decided to give all Hackathon attendees who complete a hack and present in the 24-hour period free tickets to the Disrupt conference Monday and Tuesday. That’s a $1,000-plus value for s...

   Startup,Beijing,TechCrunch,Disrupt,2011     2011-10-28 12:41:43

  In 2012, let’s stop talking web design and start talking product design

“My hope for 2012 is that some of the old guard of well-respected web gurus stop talking HTML and CSS and start talking serious development. I love the way many of the old guard write and evangelize, but I’m tired of discussing basically the same stuff we were in 2006.” I wasn’t specifically referring to Jeffrey Zeldman, but he (somewhat arrogantly) assumed I was, and responded with a sarcastic, “And a merry Christmas to you, sir.” ...

   Web design,Model,Module focus,2012     2011-12-26 08:49:03

  5 Innovative Web Design Trends Startups Should Consider Adopting

Nowadays, every market has the tendency to shift and change on a whim, and it is no different in the world of web design. No one in their right minds has the time to sit and watch the market for possible shifts as it takes up too much time and no one can really predict what’s going to happen so we’re just forced to adapt and improvise. Currently, there are 5 trends that have caused an uproar and have reshaped the online marketplace and are worth looking into. Think Big First an...

       2017-11-02 06:12:47

  How I Program Stuff

I love programming. I can truly say that of all the things I enjoy, I enjoy programming the most. There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you create something. Writing code is a lot like building your own little universe. When you build stuff, you're in complete control, and, no matter how hard you fight it, your code directly reflects yourself. If you write sloppy code, I can almost guarantee you'll be a sloppy person. If you haphazardly throw code around with any ca...

   Programming,Steps,Isolate,Eliminate     2012-01-17 11:39:51

  JavaScript: It's a Language, Not a Community

There's nothing like jsconf for bringing out the meta! Since the conference ended two blog posts have created a lot of buzz, at least within my own twitter bubble. First, Rebecca Murphey's JavaScript: It's a Language, Not a Religion. I take Rebecca's post as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hero-worship and the tendency to assume that the people we respect in one sphere share our views in other spheres. I bring it up here not because I want to discuss the content of her post but b...

   JavaScript,Language,Community     2012-04-07 10:37:40

  Why I Won’t Hire You

I will be very honest with you in this post. Most interview articles only show obvious mistakes, as if most people don’t know showing up late is bad form. I will tell you the things I didn’t really know about until I was the one interviewing, and interviewing for a variety of positions and person-types. No interview prep article ever prepared me in the right way for how interviewers really think. That is what I will be sharing with you today. When you first walk in...

   Career,Hire,Preparartion,CV,Resume     2012-01-11 04:38:19

  That’s Not TDD

A few months ago I was visiting a client who was having a lot of problems using TDD. “It takes over half an hour to run our unit tests,” he said. “You are not doing TDD,” I said. “In order for tests to be valuable all of them must run fast—within a few seconds, or developers will stop running tests frequently.” “But how to I make them run fast?” he asked, “Just connecting to the database takes 30 seconds” So I showed him a techn...

   TDD,Driver,QA,Model,Uncontrol,Method     2011-08-25 02:26:29

  4 types of programmers

Not every one who writes code is a programmer. Programmers are people who live with programming. There are 4 types of programmers: scientist, coder, expert and artisan.Scientist, they are more like mathematicians rather than programmers. They invented various theories, algorithms and terminologies. Proofs and calculations in textbooks are all from these people. Moreover other programmers more or less benefit from their work. Sometimes one paper published by them can change the way of thinking of...

   Programmer,Coder,Expert     2013-07-13 09:19:03

  Are older people better programmers?

Peter Knego states something interesting: “It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.”. He uses reputation and other metrics from StackOverflow to corroborate his point. His summary is: Number of coders drops significantly with age. Top developer numbers, at age 27, drop by half every 6-7 years.Developers in their 40s answer roughly twice as much and ask half the questions compared to colleagues in their 20s. It seems younger generation learns and older generatio...

   Programming,Age,Experience,Skill,Advanta     2011-07-28 09:02:23