Juixe Techknow

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

• Any software feature request should be broken down to 90% thinking and 10% coding.
• Multiple-touch is the greatest things since buttons.
• If a developer fools you once, shame on you, because they are usually fooling themselves when it comes to giving accurate estimates.
• Don’t take developers estimate at face value.
• Recommend The Rubyist for the Developers Directory on Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/directory/recommend/developers/rubyist
• Many non-programming software users don’t understand the meaning of concatenated or null so don’t use these in labels in your UI.
• I like to provide solutions that don’t involve complaining.
• If Heraclitus is right and you never step in the same river twice, then you never write the same program twice.
• Bugs keep my code humble.
• A bug’s ingenuity is proportional to a developer’s ego and self importance.
• Bugs like to in build nests out of spaghetti code in untested corner cases.
• Working running code is just one corner case.
• I use dead laptop drives as coasters.
• My emotions are user generated.
• I om nom nom nom on memes.
• The interweb is my inspiration.
• I CAN HAZ DREAMS OF INTERWEB MEMES

Team Leadership

• When life gives you lemons, you may make lemonade. When life gives me lemons, I make myself some limoncello.
• New motto/slogan: Don’t be a robot, unless you are 20 feet tall and can transform into a fighter jet.
• Dream big or wake up.
• The Law of Big Consequences: Large consequences are often the effect of making considerable decisions in a big rush.
• Laughter is the duct tape equivalent of emotions, it can be used to patch up bad feelings or misunderstandings.
• Manual, Error Prone, Time Consuming. Pick none!
• When people dig their own hole they can’t get out of it by digging deeper.
• Fight the power, and fight the hype.
• A key skill in life is to know when to end a conversation.
• Nothing is how you thought of it originally, it is up to you to make it better.
• If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.

Product Placement

• Amazon knows what books you bought for the Kindle, how often and for how long you read, can add and remove books, and read your bookmarks, notes, and highlights…
• FaceBook, Inc = F.B.I.
• Apple wants to design multiple-touch devices, Google wants to crawl content, Facebook wants to own your social graph and associated data.
• Facebook is really dumbing down the web with the like button.
• Facebook’s Open Graph is not really open. If you don’t own the platform, can look through the source, can own the data it is not open!
• Did someone just unlocked the Foursquare Sellout Badge at Yahoo HQ!
• I’ve had enough Lifetime movies for one lifetime.
• The world according Ronald McDonald is made out of corn meal.
• The McChicken nugget is the worst thing since sliced bread.
• Peeps are the most disgusting artificial food product.

Qoute

• One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. – Bob Marley
• I don’t like negotiating with people I can’t beat up. – Goldberg
• We live in an amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation. – Louis C.K.
• Beware of artists they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous. – Queen Victoria
• He eyes are the nipples of the face. -The House Bunny

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

• Security pet peeves: captchas, security questions, having to login after changing my password.
• A supercomputer won’t solve the incompetence of bad programmers on a deadline.
• All software is in beta.
• The Like button needs to be killed.
• \-: “premature optimization is root all of evil.” (-: “That’s what she said.”
• This must be a record. I just improved our app’s memory consumption by 80%, some 400MB, by changing one line of code.
• I love technology because I can now blame my misspelling on my iPhone.
• Where 2.0 is the new meme. Is your website Where 2.0 aware?
• Building a community and building a business around a community are not the same thing.
• The linked list was recently patented, I’m going to patent something critical to civilization, like calculus or pottery.
• Dear debugger, I wish you could introspect my feelings and put a breakpoint on my heart break.
• A slew of computer bugs are caused by assumptions made by the programmer.
• You know things are bad when you get error code 0000.
• Bugs grow organically.
• It is possible to make spaghetti code out of Obeject Oriented Programmmmmming?
• Rule of thumb: use immutable objects as keys to hash maps otherwise get to you your debugger.

Team Leadership

• The best ideas are free.
• No matter what, you will never be less busy.
• Let’s be honest, anywhere from 10-30% of a resume is a stretch.
• So as not to forget anything, remember nothing.
• When you give someone else time, you waste you own.
• Don’t give any answer, give the right question.
• If you have a one trick pony, ride it until it is ready to be put to pasture.
• Problems are meant to be solved only if they can’t be ignored.
• The one best possible thing you can do to make any situation better is to not make it worse.
• One can lead by asking questions, just as well as giving orders.
• If you build it, they will come. But if you make it to complex or change it to often, then they will leave.
• The secret ingredient is to believe there is a secret ingredient.
• I don’t express myself best when speaking, but when reflecting.
• Praying may not change the world, but it can change your perspective which is helpful to change your world.
• Folks usually want the what first but I think that the why and the how is more important than the what.

Product Placement

• Facebook announced a major investment by the CIA. It was reported that the US Gov will push for Facebook Connect as a National ID program.
• PayPal just sucks. I can transfer money to former Soviet Bloc countries faster than I can between PayPal and my bank.
• Spam is like a staple in Hawaii. So it comes as no surprise that Mahalo is one of the most spam ridden sites online.
• My suggestion to cable companies: give away basic cable to every American with on demand features. Add value outside the cable box.
• Which will provide better value/info for businesses, yelp or foursquare?
• The current Apple Appstore approval time is rand() * Months.
• McDs should make a tofu McMuffin.
• A sign at a Palo Alto church: redeem your soul, there is an app for that.
• Purple Cow Thinking: don’t be boring, safe is risky, design rules now, very good is bad.

Quote

• If there is a limit, you should, you must test it. – Seth Godin/Purple Cow
• Vision without execution is hallucination – Thomas Edison
• Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Herman Cain

Speaking about the public allegations that Mark Zuckerberg, alleged founder of Facebook, hacked into Harvard school email accounts of rivals and school journalists Kevin Rose said that the allegations don’t even sound technically possible. The way the allegations are described, Mark Zuckerberg used the passwords of Facebook users he wanted to track on other systems. Since many online users tend to have one or two different username and/or passwords, if you have the password for on online service you might guess a the login password to another service for that same user. Clear text passwords are a real security concern. On This Week in Tech # 238, Kevin said, “I doesn’t make sense, I don’t see it happening. … Nobody really stores passwords in plain text anymore, I can’t imagine Facebook would have done that.” I’m a fan of Kevin’s Diggnation podcast but I have to call him on this social media bullshit on technical grounds. It might be that his social graph is clouding his judgment. The sad truth is that even today, some large companies have be called out for storing passwords in clear text. In fact, a long time sponsor of Diggnation, Go Daddy was recently accused of storing passwords in plain, clear, simple to read text. Surely, he must have known or heard of the Go Daddy privacy mishap. His explanation that no one really uses clear text passwords anymore is very naive, it sounds like the advice given in the many tech conferences that Kevin is known to attend. I very much doubt that some “copy and paste” programmer in some college dorm room in 2004 would develop a website with 2010 best practices and user experience.

I would hope that Facebook does not employ practices such as these now, but I sure don’t trust them with my account and do the bare minimum on Facebook that is required to keep up with friends. An anonymous Facebook developer in an interview stated that any Facebook developer can impersonate any user and all data is unencrypted so any developer can possible run SQL queries to look up your data.

You have to think about it, for a social networking site, why can’t you befriend it’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, like in other sites. I mean, Tom is in my top eight on MySpace. Don’t trust the 800 pound gorilla as far as you can trow it especially if it is riding the elephant in the room.

Aside from my initial shock of Google’s blatant privacy oversight, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon. I learned that if you can’t beat them, join them, and if you going to join them might as well try to get some new followers in the process. Using a Google Mail account that I do not user as my primary private emails, I updated my public profile and began following as many technology influencers as possible. During the course of a full day of using Google Buzz, I buzzed mostly about Google Buzz. Here is what I was buzzing about the first day of using Google Buzz.

• With any new service there is always a land rush for the vanity url, profile name, and followers?
• The short for Google Mail is GMail. The abbreviation for Google Voice is GVoice. Will Google Buzz be shorten down to GBuzz? What about Guzz?
• Google Buzz is a new opportunity for the race to reach 1,000,000 followers. I hope @aplusk hasn’t heard of Google Buzz yet as it would give me a head start.
• I expected Microsoft to blatantly copy Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare before Google.
• When Twitter first came out Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose had the most followers for the longest time because the early adopters where mostly technologists. But once celebrities and mass media discovered Twitter, and after the stop laughing at the concept, they quickly gained the most followers and brought on new users. Leo Laporte currently has over 6K++ followers. Just wait until Britney Spears gets her buzz on.
• I am not sure how Google will combat the additional spam I expect because of Google Buzz and Google Profiles. But I imagine, spammers and marketers are already hard at work developing spam bots that will follow everyone possible and then it is very easy to figure out peoples email address by adding at gmail.com at the end of you profile user name which is public, visible, and searchable.
• That is the plural of buzz? Buzzes?
• What is the verb of using Google Buzz? Buzzing? Like, “I can’t talk cause I am buzzing right now.”
• What I like about Buzz is that it has not been taken over by marketing and SEO bot accounts, just like the early days of Twitter.
• Does anyone else notice that when you are commenting on a Buzz post the page jumps up and down, kinda like flickering, due to all the updates happening around where you are commenting? There are soo many updates below and above other posts that my comment text box jumps to fit in storm of other comments around it.
• If you don’t like the flickering, I get’s me dizzy after a while, click on the post’s time stamp in the upper right corner. The link is to the page for this one post and it does have the jumpy flickering visible when commenting in the middle of your stream.
• I think that Google and Facebook are in a battle for your friends. But it feels more like a Belfast brawl cage fight… Google and Apple are battling it out in in the mobile space with tit for tat guerrilla warfare… i.e. you can use the word ‘Android’ to describe you app on the Apple App Store. Now Google will suck a lot of the hot air valuation from Facebook. I think Jason Calacanis stated that Facebook lost half it’s value because of Google Buzz… and Microsoft is trying to pick a fight with Google in the search space with Bing but it is not getting much traction.
• I still have not connected my other services into Buzz. I see some people have but they get multiple buzzes (buzz posts) for the same content. It seems like some sort of feed recursion, where the Facebook comment get’s read in by FriendFeed, then read in by Twitter, then feed into Buzz two or three times for each original post, sometimes one buzz post has the same content duplicated. I feel like I need a network architect to help me sort it all out… LOL.
• Following along and contributing to a conversation is so much easier on Buzz than Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
• Not missing Farmville updates on Facebook. This is the longest time I have gone without finding random alien cow on my wall.
• Now that I filter out Buzz messages in my inbox, I can’t find the buzz threads I commented on.
• I’m going to buzz my facebook to tweet my tumblr post on myspace and blog about it.
• Remember when following someone meant stalking… Now it means, friending.
• Having a buzz attack.
• My tweets are still no popping up on my buzz.
• Not liking how tweets show up on my buzz stream, a bunch at a time, in the middle of the night, hours after they were first tweeted. I thought Google had ‘realtime’ access to tweets. I thought Google has access to Twitter’s firehouse.
• There are a few reasons why I like Buzz over Twitter. The ability to edit buzzes after they have been posted and commented on, and the ability to post more than 140 characters at a time. What I don’t like is that, unlike Facebook, you can’t delete comments left on you posts from trolls or stalkers or folks buzzing on their own supply. Even after you block spammers their comments are still visible in your posts.
• There is a lot of negative reaction regarding the privacy failures with Google Buzz. I think that the problem with Google Buzz is not that it is integrated in GMail. The problem is the defaults of Google Buzz, including auto-follow, and public profiles, and the inability to use a public profile name other than your private GMail user name, the blocking functionality does not seem to work, etc.
• Google pulled a Facebook move in terms of privacy… Their motto of ‘do no evil’ did not stop them from doing something so stupid.
• How does one get verified on Google Buzz/Profile? I certify myself. Does my mom need to call Google to verify my identity? What else will Google verify? What I really need is an alibi and some receipts from a convenience store in Albuquerque, New Mexico for last night.
• Ansel Adams would not have had used Flickr, Shakespeare would not had has used Twitter, Ghandi would not have had used Facebook, and Columbus would not have had used Foursquare.. But I am sure they would all have had used Google Buzz.

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 your code works not because of your programming intentions but because of bug side effects and your client doesn’t care, it is not done.
• I need a software development bug repellent.
• Design fail if you fix a log message and you break some functionality.
• If a carpenter’s rule of thumb is to “measure twice, cut once” then a programmer’s rule of thumb should be “design twice, code once, refactor a few times, and optimize only if you have to.”
• Saying you know programming is like saying you know how to read, a first grader knows how to read!!
• Requirements gathering is not creative writing.
• I love requirements: The initial instruction should completely initialize the initial value.

Team Leadership

• The only two requirements for a manager is that he is breathing and that he can communicate with his team in their language.
• What happens to you is not other people’s fault, it is your opportunity.
• There is nothing worse than a perfectionist that doesn’t know what he wants.
• The worst thing you can so when you make a mistake is lie about it.
• Every once in a while you have to recalculate, reshuffle, and/or remix your priorities.
• Embrace the edge.

Product Placement

• In Google We Trust.
• Google claims their motto is to ‘do no evil’, put I suggest they change it to ‘do no customer support.’
• If you use Google search to find Google Mail customer support and still can’t find it, is that a fail in their customer support or search?
• There should be Freedom of Information Act for corporations. I want to know everything that Google knows about me and how that info is used
• Can’t believe the AT&T website is not iPhone/mobile friendly.
• Apple should develop a dual screen iPhone, iPhone GS3 DS.
• I imagine a time when Zynga will have in-game ads for Monsanto genetic modified seeds on FarmVille or Foster Farm turkeys for Cafe World.
• Facebook saves everything you create/post/save/click/delete, it can reverse engineer what you where thinking.
• Doing four square drive-by check-ins.
• Does Craigslist have an iPhone app?
• Do you have multiple twitter personality disorder?

Quote

• If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living. – Seneca
• If I could make the same amount of money but wake up until when I can’t hold in my pee any longer, I will be a success. – Phil Kaplan
• The answer to the question “where do good ideas come from” is always the same, the come from bad ideas. – Seth Godin
• Only the mediocre are always at their best. – Jean Giraudoux
• From pitch perspective, the more you wear your idea, the more it fits you… – Brad Feld
• Nothing fails like success. – Arnold Toynbee
• I totally question the conventional wisdom of the American dream. – Anil Dash
• If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin. – Iva Turgenev

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

• Are we that good that some features work because of an unintentional side effect of a bug?
• I’ve heard of cloud computing, even ground computing, but I can’t wait until I can do intergalactic-interdimensional computing.
• Maintenance is a real full time job and it should be planned, scheduled, and budgeted accordingly.
• Maintainability is a feature.
• Team meetings should not feel like AA meetings.
• The debugger don’t lie, but the test might.
• Old legacy systems don’t die, they just complicate your architecture.
• Mashup data with dreams, feeds, and feelings…

Team Leadership

• Guilt is not the optimal way to inspire people to do what is right.
• Knowledge is like an fractal iceberg, and what you know is the tip of a snowflake in the tip of an iceberg in an ice planet.
• Usually there is only one way to win at a given time, but many ways to lose most of the time.
• When people don’t listen to the truth they are lying to themselves.
• Not all great ideas make for a good business.
• Thinking Asymmetrically!

Product Placement

• Should I get a Droid or wait for the new Google phone?
• Does Zuckerborg eat his own dog food when it comes to privacy, his real profile is not public, just his fan page in which he doesn’t post much.
• The only way Zuckerborg would appreciate privacy is if TMZ deployed their paparazzi on him.
• @zynga I would love to give points/credits as a gift in non-spammy and non-recurring way without signing up to services I don’t need.
• @zynga can I buy Cafe World gift card?
• I just got a subscription of Mobile Me. I like how I can track, lock down, and erase the data of my iPhone from the web.
• Got crack? There’s an app for that!
• Twitter should increase to 256 characters…
• Money don’t grow on trees, but with these prices for xmas trees you would think it does.

Quote

• What came first, chicken nuggets or the egg mcmuffin? – Little Jackie
• If I ask no questions I hear no lies. – Little Jackie.
• The Three Es of Good Work: Excellent, Engaging, and Ethical. – Howard Gardner
• The United States has been dominated by the three Ms: Money, Markets, and Me. – Howard Gardner
• If you can’t cover it up, turn it up. – Adam Curry/NA-152 #noagenda
• We have privatized our foreign policy – Philip Brenner
• The more complex an economy is, the more fragile it is, and the more cataclysmic its disintegration can be. – Bryan Ward-Perkins