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  Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

The problem with shit work is that no one likes doing it, but an awful lot of people say they do.Shit workTake a look at Twitter Lists. The idea behind Twitter Lists was that users would carefully cultivate lists on Twitter of different accounts they’re following (or not following). These could be divided into lists like Family, Friends, Coworkers, People I Find Mildly Attractive, People To Murder, People I Find Mildly Attractive And Want To Murder, and so on.The problem is that, anecdota...

   Design,Facebook,Twitter,User oriented     2011-11-03 13:28:59

  How NOT to teach a computer language

For the past year or so my wife has been taking online classes to get a computer science degree. For most of her classes she’s done great, she’s been flying through HTML and SQL, even up to the point where she can handle multilevel joins and optimizing through indexes. That was until she hit her vb.net class. I had no idea why she was having problems with a language has easy as vb.net so I started helping her out and find out why she was having so many problems. I’ve also ad...

   Programming,Teach,Book,Grade,Method,Computer     2011-11-06 14:52:13

  Best Rich Text Editors ready to use in web projects

This post illustrates five interesting rich text editors ready to use in your web projects. I also provided some guidelines regarding how to implement them on your pages using a few lines of HTML code. Try them!1. Yahoo! UI Library: Rich Text EditorThe Yahoo! Rich Text Editor is a UI control that replaces a standard HTML textarea and is based on Yahoo! UI Library; it allows for the rich formatting of text content, including common structural treatments like lists, formatting treatments like...

   RTE,Example,Project,Open Source,Best,Sim     2011-07-27 10:57:33

  Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

The prevalence of free, open WiFi has made it rather easy for a WiFi eavesdropper to steal your identity cookie for the websites you visit while you're connected to that WiFi access point. This is something I talked about in Breaking the Web's Cookie Jar. It's difficult to fix without making major changes to the web's infrastructure. In the year since I wrote that, a number of major websites have "solved" the WiFi eavesdropping problem by either making encrypted HTTPS web traffic an accou...

   Web traffic,Security,HTTPS.Encryption,Wifi     2012-02-24 05:02:58

  Why Javascript is a Joy

I’m probably a bit biased – being a front-end web developer for a few years will do that – but I really enjoy writing Javascript. I’ve recently retreated from pure coding the last few months, but I got an opportunity this past week to jump back into some tasks, and it has reminded me how fun it is to dive into our[1] front-end codebase. Yes, Javascript can be surprisingly elegant yet completely infuriating, and all on the same line of code; for a long time, ...

   JavaScript,Speed,Simplicity,Malleable     2012-03-26 15:00:31

  Scala Macros

This is the home page of project Kepler, an ongoing effort towards bringing compile-time metaprogramming to Scala. Our flavor of macros is reminiscent of Lisp macros, adapted to incorporate type safety and rich syntax. Unlike infamous C/C++ preprocessor macros, Scala macros: 1) are written in full-fledged Scala, 2) work with expression trees, not with raw strings, 3) cannot change syntax of Scala. You can learn more about our vision of metaprogramming from our talks. We propose to enrich Scala ...

   Scala,Macro,Efficiency,Maintainebility     2012-02-01 00:12:15

  Transparency in Cloud Services

37signals recently launched public “Uptime Reports” for their applications (announcement). The reaction on Hacker News was rather tepid, but I think it’s a positive development, and I applaud 37signals for stepping forward. Reliability of cloud applications is a real concern, and there’s not nearly enough hard data out there. Not all products are equally reliable; even within 37signals, the new reports show a 3:1 variation in downtime across apps. That said, ...

   Cloud,Transapency,37signals,Announcement     2012-01-10 07:24:02

  In defence of Objective-C

An unashamed apologist’s perspective on the loveliest language i’ve worked with.I’ve worked with a lot of programming languages in my time. Not a huge number, mind you, but enough that i can say that i’m open minded and seasoned about it. And, as they say: ‘Don’t feed the trolls’ – well, i’m about to do exactly that: feed the trolls at work who love to rag on about how awful obj-c is! So here i go, foolishly treading where no sensible...

   Apple,Objective-C,Syntax,Defense,Memory management     2011-10-17 11:28:39

  Peter Thiel thinks tech innovation has 'stalled'

Peter Thiel says the United States no longer cares much about science or technology(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)ASPEN, Colo.--One of the Internet's most influential investors and entrepreneurs is offering a dire prediction: the pace of technological change is stagnating.Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, warned that--despite spectacular advances in computer-related fields over the last few decades--technological progress overall is actually "stalled out.""There...

   Peter Thiel,PayPal,Technology,Stack,Inno     2011-08-24 08:42:42

  Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. A new study, forthcoming in Psychological Science, and led by Jason Moser at Michigan State University, expands on this ...

   Learn,Speed,Reason,Analysis     2012-02-24 05:04:46

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