#46 – Why software sucks

No one makes bad software on purpose. No benevolent programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people and making them cry. Bad software, or bad anything, happens because making things is hard, making good things doubly so. The three things that make it difficult are: Possessing the diverse skills needed not to suck.Understanding who you’re making the thing for.Orchestrating the interplay of skills, egos and constraints over the course of...

   Software design,Sucks,Software industry     2012-03-19 13:10:37

  Is programmer really profession for youth only?

- dedicated to the new programmers just into the workplace.

One young Chinese friend asked me: is programmer meant only for less experienced youth? Should I consider transition once if I work on it until 30 years old?

   Programmer,Youth,Product,Project,Career,Analysis     2012-03-18 07:06:44

  ICO Checklist: How to Launch a Successful Initial Coin Offering

Amongst the many important things that took place in Blockchain industry in 2017, Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) may be considered as the most important of all. ICO helps business/idea owners to pre-sell access to their services or products and in a way to fund the development of those services or products. To help founders/ startups define an effective launch process and provide perspective on everything that they will need on their ICO journey, we have jotted down few points which will serve as...

   INITIAL COIN OFFERING,ICO CHECKLIST,INITIAL COIN OFFERINGS (ICO)     2018-05-28 07:32:53

  Apps and web apps and the future

Dave Winer: Why apps are not the future: The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. Let’s set aside one thing right away. The browser is an app. Text editors, outliners, and web servers are apps. And, without them, there’s no web at all. Somebody has to write these things. That implies APIs and more tools ...

   App,Web app,Future,Difference     2011-12-14 07:10:43

  The False Ideals of the Web

WE who love the Internet love the fact that so many people contribute to it. It’s hard to believe that skeptics once worried about whether anyone would have anything worthwhile to say online. There is, however, an outdated brand of digital orthodoxy that ought to be retired. In this worldview, the Internet is a never-ending battle of good guys who love freedom against bad guys like old-fashioned Hollywood media moguls. The bad guys want to strengthen copyright law, and make ...

   Web,False idea,Free,SOPA     2012-01-19 10:24:25

  Your Code is My Hell

It occurred to me recently that my experience as a Rails developer may be somewhat unique.I often get brought in to help preexisting Ruby/Rails projects evolve and mature in a sustainable way. As a result, the vast majority of Ruby projects I’ve worked on have been well-established by the time I arrived. In fact, offhand I can only think of one commercial greenfield Ruby project I’ve participated in. All the rest have been “legacy” from my perspective, in the ...

   Code style,Clean code,Code paradigm     2011-09-15 08:39:16

  Use DTrace to diagnose gdb issues

A few days ago, I installed the newest 64-bit gdb program (version 7.7.1) on Solaris 10 (X86_64 platform) to debug programs. After playing with the gdb a day, I found 2 issues about gdb:(1) The "set follow-fork-mode child" command doesn't take effect. By default, after the parent process forks the child process, the gdb will track the parent process, so this command can make gdb begin to follow the child process. But this command works OK on Linux.(2) The gdb can't parse the 32-bit application c...

   DTrace, debug, gdb, UNIX     2014-06-28 05:11:20

  Sequencing the Startup DNA on LinkedIn

What makes entrepreneurs different, and where do they come from? Are they born or taught? Are they unusually mobile in their careers? Does geography play a role? Do mentors and relationships matter?Numerous studies explore these questions by surveying hundreds of entrepreneurs. At LinkedIn, we take a different approach, on a different scale. By sifting through more than 120 million public profiles, we can analyze tens of thousands of startup founders’ [1]profiles – and find co...

   Startup,Linkedin,Experience,Tips,DNA,Seq     2011-09-07 10:38:58

  Program Or Be Programmed

On Thursday night I gave a talk at NYU Poly and in the Q&A a young man asked me for advice for "those who aren't technical". I said he should try to get technical. The next morning I met with a bunch of Sloan Business School students doing a trek through NYC. A young woman asked me the same question. I gave her the same answer.I don't mean that everyone should become a software engineer. I do mean that everyone should understand software engineering (or whatever technical...

   Program,Technical,Basic knowledge     2011-11-10 10:31:02

  SOME LESSONS LEARNED

Note: Google was kind enough to invite me to give a short talk at their Zeitgeist conference earlier this week. It was a really interesting conference and I got a chance to meet a lot of people I admire. For my talk, I decided to use material from some of my blog posts over the years that I thought might appeal to a broader audience. Unfortunately, I was still recovering from a nastly cold/flu so I didn’t deliver the talk as well as I’d like.  Below is the text.Today, I wanted...

   Investor,Startup,Lesson,Experience,Investment     2011-10-12 11:47:02