Good news - online retailers do not hate their customers
Sarah Perez gets it completely wrong writing in a Techcrunch article entitled Retailers Aren’t Ready For iPad Shopping Trend Now for the bad news. Despite the increases in tablet traffic, many retailers are not prepared to accommodate these new mobile shoppers. Compuware also prepared a chart showing the top retailers’ sites, and whether or not they offered an iPad-optimized website. Surprisingly, none of them do, not even Apple.com. What’s worse, Apple is also among the retailers who don’t offer a native iPad application.
Zittrain misses the point
Via slashdot, directly quoted: Harvard Law School Prof Jonathan Zittrain explains in The Personal Computer is Dead why you should be afraid — very afraid — of the snowballing replicability of the App Store Model. ‘If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens,’ warns Zittrain, ‘we’ll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we’ll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible.
The argument for coding standards
cbloom rants in The Mature Programmer on the value of coding standards: Strict coding standards are actually an intellectual relief because they remove all those decisions and give you a specific way to do the syntax. (The same of course goes for reading other people’s code - your eyes can immediately start looking at the functionality, not try to figure out the current syntax) Don’t forget that using a great architecture, having great conventions and a strict coding standard takes this up to the next level.
Automate or Die
Computers are excellent at performing dull repetitive structured tasks, yet many organizations use armies of people to perform these tasks. Computers are also great at following along the same mind numbing process over and over again (we call this programming), yet we tend as users of computers, to perform these tasks manually on our computers. Today’s Hiltmonism is very simple. Automate or die. Make the computer do the work so you can have a life.
The best Steve Jobs quote
This may be it. “When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
The four hour rule
Programming is a craft of the mind. Programmers need to think through the feature they are writing, build up the code and a solution in their heads, maintain the product architecture, structure and conventions in the background and plan and design the next part of the code they are assembling. And then they need the time to execute all that. Once in The Zone™, programmers are exceptionally productive. But The Zone™ has limits.
e-reader roundup
Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, writing in an amazingly comprehensive review of current e-readers (including e-ink devices and new low-end tablets), writes If you’re primarily in the market for an e-reader, get an e-ink device. And if you’re looking for a tablet for apps, games, and videos in addition to reading, unless the iPad’s price is absolutely out of the question forever, I suggest getting the iPad. And the e-ink winner unsurprisingly is the current Kindle (called the Kindle 4 in the review).
No Service Competition in New York
Just a quick check on my choices for 21st century data services available at my apartment in New York city: Internet, Landline, Television Time Warner Cable Verizon FIOS Oops, only TWC from today based on the agreement reached where Verizon quit the land-based business (See Susan Crawford’s article: Smug and chagrined). So no choice. Mobile Phone AT&T Verizon T-Mobile (still a dead spot after 8 years) Sprint (same as T-Mobile) Neither work well, so I have to stick with AT&T because at least they have a MicroCell.
Data caps don't work
Nate Anderson, writing for Ars Technica in Data caps a “crude and unfair tool” for easing online congestion Internet providers argue that they need to impose monthly data caps on their users in order to slay the “bandwidth hogs” running wild and free through their networks, goring ordinary users with their tusks when all those users want to do is view some funny cat pictures online after a tough day at the office.
Explain the Problem - Not your Solution
Something that drives me quite batty is when people turn to me for help and request a solution without explaining the problem. In other words, they tell me their answer to a puzzle, without explaining what the puzzle is, and expect me to understand what to do. They want the answer to be 42, but what is the question being asked? This happens a lot in software design. The client calls up and tells us they want something done a specific way.