Oct 5 2009

Retweet September 2009

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

  • One source of conflict with human computer interactions is that they unsure of themselves, we seek answers and they seek approval.
  • What modern Operating Systems need is some level of artificial intelligence subsystem which all applications can use.
  • I hate when each application asks the same question, "are you sure you want to exit?" The OS should help apps to be more opinionated.
  • Computers prompt us all the time for what smart defaults would do just fine. Computers lack of inteligence is wasting mine.
  • Programmers have a form of groupthink, Programmer Think. This is especially true if FUD becomes dogma and design choices are not tested.
  • Break Programmer Think, test all assumptions, every design choice, every implementation, every third party library, every different scenario
  • If you are testing, have spent two days on a single problem, look in the log file, especially that null pointer exception, chances are that’s the problem.
  • Even with all this cloud computing we still can’t forecast the weather accurately!
  • First there was the web, the the web 2.0, now the perpetual web beta.
  • Going gang busters don’t scale.
  • Everything is beta.

Team Leadership

  • If you don’t agree on paper, you are not going to agree in code.
  • When you don’t take any personal responsibility and make any proper planning, it is always someone else’s fault.
  • Seen it happen… Your brains cells are inverse proportional to your climb up the corporate ladder and the resources you manage.
  • Each solution comes with a free can of worms!
  • OH: you would make a great manager, cause you make a grumpy developer.

Product Placement

  • Google can’t commit to a version number that is why everything is in beta. Beta is like a philosophy at Google, testing like a religion.
  • Google’s philosophy of the meaning of life, the universe and everything else: Beta.
  • This Week in Tech does ads for their ads… to promote the fact that they need to take ads.
  • Apple has sold 225 million iPods to date.
  • Twitter: If you build it they will come, but if they all come you will epic fail.

Questions

  • What happens when someone has buggy code in their test cases, how do you test the jUnit tests for bad test logic?
  • Is Mono chasing .NET’s tail lights and .NET chasing Java’s tail light and Java is chasing Ruby’s tail light, …?
  • Infinite Shakespeare Theorem: What would get if you have Shakespeare hitting a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time?
  • All clicks being equal, is the Amazon affiliate program better than Google Adsense?
  • What is your innovation quotient coefficient?
  • What is your innovation quotient?
  • What name/term has the most website related moniker/naming patterns? e-iComputroniiixr beta 2.0?
  • Are social networking sites making you unsociable?
  • Is it possible to burn the rice and still have it be under cook?
  • Which do you prefer best, an uncomfortable truth or a flattering lie?
  • If you can have any view from your back porch, what would it be?