Juixe Techknow

Just like opinions, at the end of the year everyone has their own predictions for the new year. I came to these predictions by reading the back of caps of green tea bottles. If you like to see my accuracy with past predictions see the predictions of 2009.

• In the future everybody will have their 15 minutes of fame and their own iPhone app on the App Store.
• The App Store app review process will be even more stringent, opaque, and occult. the App Store will require a vial of blood from each iPhone developer.
• Steve Jobs has himself cloned and a disk image of his memories will be implanted in the clone.
• The Apple Tablet shall come with Steve Jobs’ iCommandments.
• The Google Android platform will explode with hundreds of Android phones on the market, and no app review process for apps. Also the first Android trojan horse virus will affect Android users.
• Google will release a Google Phone and become a true telephony company with Google Voice.
• The Google Twins will have a falling out over an argument as to who does less evil.
• Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product and User Experience at Google, will leave Google for her own startup where she will develop the next killer web app which consists of a single search field and no buttons or text.
• Twitter will be hacked, Fail Whale, and Jump the Shark all in the same day.
• Facebook will buy Foursquare only to let it bit rot like Google did with Dodgeball.
• Facebook will allow advertisers to impersonate you and post in your friends wall.
• Zynga will but Facebook and rename it to FarmBook.
• News Corp will buy Digg for $500 Million only to have all the users migrate over to Reddit.
• Paul Graham will be deified by entrepreneurs around the world and will be given a mandatory 3% for $10 of all new startups.
• The US government will award $10 million contract for an installation of WordPress for a government site.

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• If bad artists copy and great artists steal then bad programmers copy and great programmers cut and paste.
• You have to think outside our current requirements and think about solutions that fit the platform and which we can build product features.
• Can programmer mood/happiness be deciphered based on rate of check-ins, changelist, source code diff size, amount of refactoring?
• Software is alchemy. The magic of software is that it can turn complexity to simplicity.
• One man’s feature is another’s complexity.

Team Leadership

• A 10:00 PM design leads to 1:00 AM release leads to 8:00 AM FAIL.
• There are sore losers and sour winners!
• You may know your competitors, but do you know your complementor? Complementors are businesses and services that complement yours.
• Know thy competitor, and get to know thy complementor.
• The biggest risk is not taking risks.
• Don’t be afraid of someone stealing your idea, be afraid that someone is actually going to follow through with it
• Taking startup advice is like taking dating advice.

Product Placement

• Google Wave does not feel like a wave, it is more like a creek and I am without a paddle.
• I’m riding the Google Wave, but not drinking the Google Kool-Aid.
• It’s great that Apple invest in design and multi-touch tech, but they need to invest in water proof tech too. I’ve lost two ipods to water.
• I want to tether an iPod Touch with an iPhone.
• The iPhone is the PC.
• I have a growing collection of ebooks on my Kindle, in fact I have not bought a hard cover book since I got my Kindle over a year ago.
• Recharging my Kindle. It used to be that a book recharged my creativity and imagination now I have to recharge my ebook.
• FaceBook should just rename itself to FarmBook! All I see on FaceBook when I sign in are updates from FarmVille, Cafe World, etc…
• Will Microsoft port Google Go to the .NET platform? Why will they call it? G++? Iron Google Go? Google Go 2010 Business Edition?
• What will people abbreviate Google Go down to? GooGo? GoGo? Goo? Goog++? Golang? Pogo?
• ‘Python 300’ + ‘C++’ + Googleplex + $$$ + WTF = Google Go

Self Development

• Creditability is worth more than money in the bank.
• It is better to work on your own ideas than on someone else’s assumptions.
• To think outside the box it helps to first master the box.
• Don’t do what stops you from doing what you want to do unless that is what you want to do.
• You are damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and damned if you hesitate.
• If you don’t have the key to success, call on a locksmith.

Quotes

• The biggest motivation is not the money but the impact. – Matt Mullenweg/#TWiST 26
• You can’t build everything and there is no more a killer feature. Everyone has a different killer feature. – Matt Mullenweg/#TWiST 26
• I am the unhappiest WordPress user in the world, I think it sucks. – Matt Mullenweg/#TWiST 26
• Having a virtual assistant is one of the greatest training for managers. – Matt Coffin/#TWiST 27
• I only believe rumors that I start – Mike Elgan
• Wait a second, … you’ll waiting for me to take a risk, and then you’ll take a risk, that is not risk at all – @jason/#TWiST
• We spend more time worrying and planning for the downside than we do spend worrying and planning for the upside. – Mark Pincus/Zynga
• A lot of what you have to do as CEO is convince the employees that you are not a normal company. – Mark Pincus/Zynga
• If you don’t have control of your company, you are an employee. – Mark Pincus
• The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. – Eric Hoffer

In this tweet snippet of a conversation I replied to @ButtercupD who had been tweeting for the few days prior to this conversation that she was elected by Four Square to be the mayor of different locations in her area.

• @ButtercupD: According to foursquare, I’m the mayor of Fred Segal/Santa Monica, and that’s all that matters. period.
• @juixe: my boss wants me to be the mayor of the office…
• @ButtercupD: aww, bummer. doesn’t sound as fun as fred segal. :((

In this tweet snippet, I had been thinking how my Kindle holds a whole bookshelf of books, how a private library of physical books can take up whole bunch of storage space (dead space) and paper (dead trees). A laptop, netbook, or electronic book reader can contain as much knowledge as there is at the local library.

• @techknow: A book is heavier than the Internet.
• @KishoreGopalan: But Internet doesnt give you the pleasure of page-turning.
• @techknow: The pleasure I miss most from having physical hard cover books is throwing them at people. ;)

This conversation started when I asked if Google should remove the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button from their home page. Google prides themselves in having a minimalistic home page, they have been known to count and limit the number of words that appear on the home page. Thinking about how they could reduce down their page I thought of two suggestions. They could remove the lucky button or use hieroglyph-like icons for words such as privacy, search, lucky, sign out, settings, etc.

• @techknow: Should Google remove the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button from their home page?
• @mtodd: No. In fact, I wish that button was available everywhere, because I often know the first result is what I’m looking for…
• @techknow: I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Does that say something about how I feel as a person about search?
• SchemaCzar: Until “Google Search” gives repeatable results, every button should read “I’m Feeling Lucky”

If you like to chime in with our thoughts about code, process, management, and just about anything else, hit me up at techknow and juixe on Twitter.

David Heinemeier Hansson, commonly referred as DHH, is a polarizing programmer with a self professed fucking potty-mouth. He is opinionated and uncensored. He is a world renowned hater, he hates big enterprise software, large startup valuations, and apple pie. The web development framework he fashioned after himself is as opinionated and know-it-all as he is. From Wikipedia…

Hansson is known for the crude and brutal way he expresses his opinions; both online and in real life. One of the main criticisms of Hansson has been about his and his company’s arrogance. Hansson, however considers these criticism unfounded and in fact he openly acknowledges and embraces the arrogant claim made for him.

Over the last year I have collected a few choice quotes from DHH’s keynotes, blog posts, and twitter updates covering a range of topics such as programming, enterprise sotware, and company valuations.

Constraints drive innovation and getting your idea out in the wild in two months instead of six will likely do you a world of good. A month or two out the gates, you’ll have a pretty good idea of whether you “got something” or not.
Entrepreneurs, Angels, and the cost of launch

The best frameworks are in my opinion extracted, not envisioned. And the best way to extract is first to actually do.
Why there’s no Rails Inc

Lines of code by itself doesn’t really mean that much to me. What you’re able to express in those lines mean a lot, though. So if you’re able to write the same piece of functionality in 10 lines instead of 100 lines you’ve made huge strides in simplicity. That’s part of the argument for why Ruby is a more pleasant language to work with than say Java or C#.
Talking Rails 2.0 with David Heinemeier Hansson

This is a snowflake… Your application is not one of them. For most of the time, for most of the people what they do is not unique. You are not special
Quote from DHH on ROR

In the beginning, there was no Rails, there was only Basecamp. After working on Basecamp for a while, though, I eyed the option of giving all the generic pieces a life of their own. But even then, I continued to work on Basecamp first. Which meant that all the functionality of Rails came as extractions of a real application, not of a “what somebody might need some day” fantasy, so prevalent in framework design.
Ask 37signals: The genesis and benefits of Rails

I’m certainly of no illusions that Rails is perfect nor that Ruby is a speed daemon.
Twitter trouble

When you work with open source and you discover new requirements not met by the software, it’s your shining opportunity to give something back. Rather than just sit around idle waiting for some vendor to fix your problems, you get the unique chance of being a steward of your own destiny. To become a participant in the community rather than a mere spectator.
Twitter trouble

Scaling is the act of removing bottlenecks. When you remove one bottleneck (like application code execution), you tend to reveal another (like database queries). That’s natural and means you’re making progress.
Twitter trouble

Requiring X years of experience on platform Y in your job posting is, well, ignorant. As long as applicants have 6 months to a year of experience, consider it a moot point for comparison. Focus on other things instead that’ll make much more of a difference.
Years of Irrelevance

One of the easiest ways to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments is by injecting the assumption that whatever you’re doing needs to last forever and ever.
Optimize for Now

PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope.
The Immediacy of PHP

Bitching is such a succinct form of expression. It doesn’t require or usually entail deep analysis. It’s the easiest way to write something “interesting”.
Bitching is the killer app for Twitter

All odds are not created equal.
Startup School 2008

Often the simplest idea in the world, like treating your customers nicely, while still asking for money for what you do, can work. And you can build great businesses like that.
Startup School 2008

Forgoing sleep is like borrowing from a loan shark. Sure you get that extra hours right now to cover for your overly-optimistic estimation, but at what price? The shark will be back and if you can’t pay, he’ll break your creativity, morale, and good-mannered nature as virtue twigs.
Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

What separates programmers who are 10x more effective than the norm is not that they write 10x as many lines of code. It’s that they use their creativity to solve the problem with 1/10th of the effort. The creativity to come up with those 1/10th solutions drops drastically when I’m tired.
Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

Software development is rarely a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s multiple marathons, actually. So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal. You end up with just 77% of your available peak. What a bad trade.
Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor

I’ve always been a jealous person. I’ve always wanted things that others had. Skills they possessed. Authority they held. Success they enjoyed. But instead of feeling sorry for myself and growing spiteful of others, I found it to be the best motivation to imitate, adopt, and strive for the same rewards.
Productive Jealousy

Don’t let growth be your primary yardstick of success.
Finding the natural size for your company

How about you turn your perceived weakenesses into strengths. Embrace your constraints, work with limited budget of your own money and write less software.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing with a startup

Average environments begets average work.
Average environments begets average work

No one can be a rock star without a great scene.
Average environments begets average work

So if you want your team to excel, quit thinking about how you can land a room full of rock stars and ninjas. Start thinking about the room instead!
Average environments begets average work

Do you value effort over effect?
Average environments begets average work

Humans are incredibly eager to live down to low expectations.
Average environments begets average work

Are you finding the root causes for your daily grind or does the wheels just keep spinning on the same issues?
Are you finding the root cause?

Aesthetics is a feature in itself.
There’s no shame in looking good

There’s absolutely no pleasing everyone. You can’t and shouldn’t try to make everyone love you. The best you can do is make sure that they’re hating you for the right reasons.
Work on what you use and share the rest

My core philosophy about open source is that we should all be working on the things that we personally use and care about. Working for other people is just too hard and the quality of the work will reflect that. But if we all work on the things we care about and then share those solutions between us, the world gets richer much faster.
Work on what you use and share the rest

I think the days of the traditional San Francisco startup approach are numbered. It’ll be flushed down the drain along with CDO’s and zero-down mortgages.
How did the web lose faith in charging for stuff?

Of all the terms I hate with a passion, “professional” would probably rank above “enterprise” and just below “potty mouth”.
@dhh

Speaking of presentations. I’d much rather we banished kung-fu kittens and went with beautiful women for the filler stock art. Works in ads!
@dhh

You’re bound to upset, offend, or annoy people when you’re not adding heavy layers of social sugarcoating.
I’m an R rated individual

Nothing is sacred in Rails, everything is up for debate.
Rails 3 and the Real Secret to High Productivity

When an advertiser is claiming something to be an “all-new” car/soap/computer/camera it usually means exactly the opposite. It actually hardly even means new, at best it’s most commonly just “marginally-new” or “just-a-few-tweaks-new”.
There’s nothing new about all-new

Focusing on just the newness of something is usually a pretty weak selling point.
There’s nothing new about all-new

Ideas on their own are just not that important. It’s incredibly rare that someone comes up with an idea so unique, so protectable that the success story writes itself. Most ideas are nothing without execution.
I had that idea years ago!

Just because you thought of a site to share photos with friends wouldn’t have made you Flickr.
I had that idea years ago!

Why does the idea of work have to be so bad that you want to sacrifice year’s worth of prime living to get away from it forever? The answer is that it doesn’t. Finding something you to love to work on seems to be a much more fruitful pursuit than trying to get away from the notion of work altogether.
Early retirement is a false idol

If you come to the realization that work in itself isn’t evil, you can stop living your life as a waterfall-planned software project too. No need to divide your timeline on earth into the false dichotomies of Sucky Work Era and Blissful Retirement Era.
Early retirement is a false idol

There’s nothing like the look of beautiful Ruby code in the morning. Gracefully colored by TextMate and rendered in Bitstream Vera pt 12.
@dhh

When I am not coding I am reading about code. Here is a short list of memerable programming quotes I read over the past year about the science and art of software development. Over this last year, my interest and reading habits have been related to software development, team leadership, and entrepreneurship and this quotes reflects those topics.

What we learned over several years is that the registry in the data center is an evil, evil thing.
Sriram Krishnan

No code is faster than no code.
Merb Core Tenent

Rails is the best framework for the 80/20 rule out there. It will get you 80% there faster than any framework, but it will fight you tooth and nail for the remaining 205.
Ezra Zygmuntowicz

Software: do you write it like a book, grow it like a plant, accrete it like a pearl, or construct it like a building?
Jeff Atwood

I will not break my back or my sanity on Windows troubleshooting any more.
Jamis Buck

Premature parameterization is the square root of all evil.
Sean McGrath

If you can’t be a chick magnet, be a porn magnet.
Zed Shaw

Piracy is a natural state of affairs for users with lots of time and no money.
Jeff Atwood

Every time DRM prevents legitimate playback, a pirate gets his wings.
Nathan Bowers

What ruby does offer is a more intuitive way of coding. Its form is simple. It’s full of grace. Ruby is succinct. It’s not the messiah of languages though it attracts many messiah-figures and their fanboy prototypes.
Renae Blair

I do believe I have post-traumatic Java syndrome.
Renae Blair

The thesis explicit in Crockford’s book (JavaScript: The Good Parts) and implicit in Conway’s (Perl Best Practices) is that the best way to use a language is to carve out a subset of its functionality that is superior to the whole smorgasbord you have on offer. It’s how people use natural languages, and it’s how a lot of good programmers use programming languages as well.
Giles Bowkett

Frameworks like Rails make you fast, and Sinatra makes even Rails look slow.
Giles Bowkett

The goal is not to establish a far-off goal and find a way to hit it, but to establish a series of tiny, immediate goals that keep you forever moving forward. Aristotle argued that virtue was mostly a matter of having good habits; Lao-Tzu tells us that the voyage of a million miles starts with a single step. So the key is to get moving and keep moving.
Giles Bowkett

Instead of charging the going rate of $250, we decided to charge $350. Why not? I figured we could establish ourselves as having the premium product simply by charging a premium. In the absence of additional information, consumers often use prices to judge products.
Joel Spolsky

That’s another flaw with performance-based rewards: They are easy for one of your competitors to top.
Joel Spolsky

Longevity is a big part of credibility.
Jason Calacanis

People’s reputations are made in the bad times more than the good times.
Jason Calacanis

If you can’t sell your product, it’s not a product–it’s a hobby.
Jason Calacanis

I fear — as far as I can tell — that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.
Alan Kay

Agile is not just about speed.
Jack Milunsky

I can’t choose whether someone is offended by my actions. I can choose whether I care.
Martin Fowler

Would you pay $100 an hour for an untrained accountant? Because if your consulting rate is $100 an hour and you do your own accounting, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Chris Wanstrath

So, what does it mean for teaching and learning programming when the solution to every beginner problem is available on the Internet?
Cay Horstmann

One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.
Ken Thompson

Deleted code is debugged code.
Jeff Sickel

Good software architects are like condoms… bad software architects are like Viagra.
Sidan

Nobody hates software more than software developers.
Jeff Atwood

Not all liquidity events are created equal.
Brandon Watson

Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.
_why

If you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. All else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive.
_why

I think Ruby is the next best thing after sliced bread and Common Lisp.
ivanstojic

The best way to market yourself is to be remarkable.
Chad Fowler

I rather raise nerds than raise gangsters.
The RZA

Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.
Mark Pincus

Chase the vision, not the money.
Tony Hsieh

Those that say it can’t be done, shouldn’t interrupt those that are actually doing it.
Michael Arrington

What it comes down to is that Rails developers are just that: Rails developers. They’re not software developers, at least not most of them. … Their framework dictates how their systems are designed instead of the problems the systems are designed to solve.
Samuel Tesla

If you are single and you want to do startups, stay single. Stay single for a while, startups can be all consuming 24/7 suck you dry.
Steve Blank

You can’t build everything and there is no more a killer feature. Everyone has a different killer feature.
Matt Mullenweg

I am the unhappiest WordPress user in the world, I think it sucks.
Matt Mullenweg

The biggest motivation is not the money but the impact.
Matt Mullenweg

If I’m on the titanic I want to be steering.
Matt Mullenweg

You don’t want to be the site that people should use, you want to be the site they can’t stop using.
Roelof Botha

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
Martin Golding

One man’s feature is another man’s complexity.
Juixe TechKnow

This geek gift guide is not so much for geeks and techies but for those that have geeks and techies in their life and need a little help in finding the right geek gift this holiday season. So if you don’t know what is the hottest gift item or you want to redeem yourself from the Cosby sweater you gave last year, this is the gift guide for you.

The hottest tech gift two years running must be the Apple iPhone GS3. The iPhone is one of those gifts that will be used every single day, and not just to make calls. In fact, the feature I use most often is email, browsing online, and Google Maps. I also use the iPhone to play freely available casual games available on the App Store. And of course you can play your iTunes music on the iPhone just as you would on your iPod. This year, the iPhone has some competition in the new breed of Android phones in particular the Motorola Droid.

Netbooks are a trendy new segment in the ultra portable laptop market. Netbooks usually refer to sub $500 laptops perfect for email and internet browsing. The ASUS Eee PC is perhaps the most popular brand in this market but there are available models like the HP Mini 1140NR and Acer Aspire One.

Acer Aspire One

The Flip MinoHD is quickly gaining a big market share of the camcorder business from established brands such as Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc. The Flip is the iPod of video cameras. It is small, portable, and simple to use. When recording, you can zoom in out and stop. When playing back you can increase/decrease the volume and pause. We have take ours on every trip we take and it is easier to use than the standard point and shoot digital camera.

The new version of the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSPgo) has the best graphic intense games available in the hand held gaming market. The PSPgo has a new slim down form factor. Download movies, shoes, and games directly from the PlayStation Network.

The Nintendo DSi portable gaming system will also be a popular with geeks this holiday season. Unlike the PSPgo, the DSi has more innovative games that take full advantage of its touch dual screens. On the DSi, the geeks in the family will enjoy games like Scribblenauts, KORG DS-10 Synthesizer, and DS classics like Brain Age 2 and TouchMaster 3.

The Nintendo Wii is perhaps the innovative console and social gaming platform currently available. The game play with the Wii Remote can be very animated. The Wii is definitely a gaming console for the whole family, and there are plenty of games that the family can play together. This holiday season Nintendo is releasing a whole slew of Mario Bros games. What geek doesn’t love Super Mario Bros based games? Two highly anticipated games are Super Mario Galaxy 2 and New Super Mario Bros.. The Mario Bros have been geek classics since the first game came out in the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

One item that a geek never has enough of is disk space. Technologist can easily fill a 100 GB hard drive with bittorrents, software, games, movies, pictures, data, etc. in no time. The geek in your life will appreciate a portable hard drive like the Western Digital My Passport which are available with 360 or 500 GB. The My Passport is the slimmest, slickest, and sexiest of the portable drives I have seen. They are small enough to carry with you in your laptop bag. As a stocking stuffer, you might be interested in getting a 32 GB USB drive. Some of the cutest USB drives are the Star Wars Mimobot Thumb Drives.

As everyone already knows, the standard geek uniform is jeans and a t-shirt. Any self respecting geek needs to have some ThinkGeek shirts in his wardrobe. ThinkGeek gear is like Armani Exchange for geeks, binary fashionable and geek chic.

Another category of gadgets in every techie at heart wishlist is electronic book readers. The Amazon Kindle DX is probably the best ebook reader in the market at this time. But Sony and Barnes and Nobles have their own offerings.
The Kindle’s wireless connectivity allow you to shop and download books on the fly as you go on the run. Hundreds of blogs are also available through the Kindle such as Slashdot and The Onion. I have a growing collection of ebooks on my Kindle, in fact I have not bought a hard cover book since I got my Kindle last year, just like I have not bought a CD since I first had my first MP3 music player.

The Powermat is the perfect gift for the early adopter techie. The Powermat is a wireless power adapter. To enable your favorite gadget (iPhone, Blackberry, DSi, etc) you need to buy and use power receiver for your device in the form of a case. With the power receiver, simply place the device on the Powermat to recharge wirelessly.

No geek gift guide is complete without a computer mouse. The Apple Magic Mouse has the form factor of something out of science fiction. The Magic Mouse uses multi-touch technology used in the iPhone. The multi-touch technology allows the whole mouse to be a button and/or a scroll wheel without actually having a button or scroll wheel. You don’t just any mouse pad you having laying around with the Magic Mouse, the SteelSeries SX Mouse Pad is more appropriate.

Apple Magic Mouse

Be sure to take a look a the Juixe Store. We have selected the best software development books that need to be in every software developer’s bookshelf such as the classics like Code Complete, The Mythical Man-month, and The Pragmatic Programmer.

If you still need a little bit more help in finding the right tech gift for the geek in your life, take a look at the following geek gift guides from other sources such as CNET.

• The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2008
• The Ruby and Rails Library
• Beginning iPhone Development
• Beginning Android Development
• CNET Holidy Gift Guide