You are not your Customer

One of the most common memes in software development is that great products come from a programmer scratching an itch. They needed software to do something, did not like what was out there, and created a great product. They were their own customer, they knew what they wanted and they made the software for themselves. As with most meme’s, this one is only somewhat true. They did have an itch. They did create some software.

Read on →

F*ck You, Pay Me

For all you designers, programmers, indies and freelancers, I give you the best, most informative video, you will ever see. Mike Monteiro a.k.a. @mike_ftw, of Mule Design gave a talk on contracts and how to deal with money discussions. Check it out: F*ck You, Pay Me. Then follow his advice.

Signing up for Everything

I sign up for every new service that comes along. Every single one. Most of them I never log into again, except to unsubscribe from their mailing lists. Every single new social network, professional network, graphics sharing site, instant messenger, free email provider, free home page display, free blogging app, book reading site, iPhone community app and all the hundreds I am missing, all have one thing in common. A hiltmon login.

Read on →

The Pummeling Pages

Brent Simmons, original author of NetNewsWire and MarsEdit, on visiting modern publication websites: They’re filled with ads and social-media sharing buttons — and more ads. And Google plus-onesies and Facebook likeys. And also more ads. Plus tweet-this-es. Plus ads. (And, under-the-hood, a whole cruise-ship-full of analytics. The page required well-more than 100 http calls.) No wonder we all like InstaPaper and Safari’s Reader mode. Source: The Pummeling Pages

The Way of the Code Samurai

Wil Shipley has been programming for decades, like me. Recently, he reposted a link to an old post that I think all programmers should read. Go on, read it now. I’ll wait. In it, he talks of the The Way of the Code Samurai, but really just points out the same topics I try to impress on all programmers I teach. Think first Write all your code “clean” the first time you write it Less source code is better Optimize only after you are done The only thing missing from my top 5 is the temporal issue

Read on →

Four Keys to Apple's Success

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of worldwide iPod, iPhone, and iOS product marketing, speaking at the “Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge” event in the UK, shared what he believes to be the four keys to Apple’s success. Focus “It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.

Read on →

Migrating to Octopress

Over the years I have created a series of blogs, but never found my voice. It’s time to do it better. So here it is, my voice, my errors, my opinions, my mistakes, my soapbox, and maybe, just maybe, someday I’ll write something interesting, in my voice.

Read on →