Software Development

• Tests? We ain’t got no tests. We don’t need no tests! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ tests!
• Test. Code. Debug. Refactor. Repeat.
• Party like a rock star, code like a _why.
• Code has a center of gravity.
• There are features that become products, products that become companies, and companies that become revolutions.
• To increase productivity when working with buggy software tools, don’t focus on how it should be done but the work around to get it done.
• Can you imagine only getting paid if there is no bugs in your ode?
• One developer’s bug is another user’s loss of faith in technology.
• Delivery dates for feature sets that there are no specs is a death wish list.
• Running software trumps unwritten specifications.
• I drop fools like I drop database tables, with one SQL statement.
• Memories are backward compatible.
• I dream in quantum bits.
• My dreams are hosted on the cloud.

Team Leadership

• 80% required in swimming is just to have your head above water, the rest is about moving forward.
• I know Google offers employees 20% time, that must be why 80% of their products feel like 80% done.
• Having your head in the clouds is better than your head in the sand! Hold up your head up high and you will see further.
• Make your own path, build your own bridge, be your own light.
• Make work be more wow!
• Future proof your thinking.
• Meeting don’t generate momentum.
• It only takes a single dash to turn a minus into a plus.
• Some set out to follow a leader, others follow his vision, and still others his path. Why not triangulate his geolocation based on all of these?
• A high IQ does not equate with success. I developed a new algo to measure likelihood of success, Kick-ass Quotient, or KQ instead of IQ!!!
• Sweep me off my feet, not under the rug.

Product Placement

• If Zuckerberg would not have created Facebook, he would have been just another picture collector on Craigslist.
• If Facebook would had been invented in the time of Hitler, Zuckerborg might had been a collaborator, aka Little Fuhrer, and would have geolocated Ann Frank
• Facebook is said to release geolocation check-in feature soon, default setting is to notify your parole officer or ex your current location.
• Why isn’t common sense the default at Facebook when it comes to users’ privacy rights.
• BP handling of the oil spill is what I called fail whale, I mean if you kill a whale it is an automatic #failwhale.
• Two guys walk into an Apple store to buy an iPad… This is not a joke, this is a tragedy, they walk empty handed because they are sold out
• Happy Quit Facebook Day!!!
• Flash, there is no app for that.
• Can you imagine a 20 inch iPad? This shall come to pass.
• The iPad is the iPC.
• At Home Depot, just came from Office Depot. Are these stores like related? Can’t wait for Gansta Depot!
• Disney wants to kill your creativity!
• People used to clock-in to work, now they check-in.
• Which is the most hated tech company, Apple, Google, Facebook, Abode???

Quote

• I love the smell of napalm in the morning! – Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
• You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. – Rahm Emanuel
• Billionaires rule supreme. – P. Sainath
• We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them. – Steve Jobs
• I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that was the case, Microsoft would have great products. – Steve Jobs
• Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere… and I thought I saw a two. – Bender
• A documented bug is not a bug; it is a feature. – James P. MacLennan
• The invisible hand of the market is actually a very visible bunch of grubby paws if you really look. – P. Sainath
• Languages shape the way we think, or don’t. – Erik Naggum
• Shawty is a eenie meenie mo lova – Sean Kingston
• If at first you don’t succeed – call an airstrike. – Banksy
• Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales. – Larry Ellison
• Baby there is a shark in the water. – VV Brown
• The market is no longer driven by shareholders. The market is driven by formulas. – @mcuban

Zombie Code

• @techknow: It is a dead end maintaining dead code, unused, and unreachable code.
• @archiloque There is something schrödingerian about dead code: it is often unreachable *until* you remove it.
• @techknow: LOL my question is, if you have dead code in a live site is that considered zombie code or sleeper cell code?

Here I question how evil Google really is when a friend warns me that whatever you say about Google may be used against you by going viral. Google is big brother and it’s CEO thinks we can place our trust in it before our governments. I can’t wait until Google hires Hilary Clinton as the Senior Vice President of the Division of State at Google.

Indexable

• @techknow Google, if you are not evil why you have to make that your motto? Who are you trying to convince?
• @vladgur: Don’t hate Google on an indexable medium.
• @techknow: Good advice, Google’s cache does not forget.

Spaghetti Code is when the code is so convoluted that it’s code path resembles a plate of entangled spaghetti. Here I rant about working with code base that smells like a bad plate of spaghetti.

Code for Dinner

• @techknow: It is possible to make Spaghetti Code out of Obeject Oriented Programmmmmming. Om nom nom.
• @mcory1: Possible? Heck, its pretty easy sometimes, even if you know what you’re doing ;)
• @techknow: I’m working on some code that looks like a cross between Spaghetti Code and Lasagna Code. I need a bottle of wine to digest/debug this.

Chat Roulette is one of those ideas that are so simple that they are genius. Here a friend and I compare and contrast between Chat Roulette and the MTV television show Jersey shore.

Jersey Roulette

• @techknow: MTV or VH1 should do a reality show based on chat roulette.
• @jzy: It’s called Jersey Shore.
• @techknow: LOL from what I have seen of Jersey Shore, I would think they used chat roulette to cast the show.
• @jzy: I was just joking of course, no offense to Chatroulette.
• @techknow: All kidding aside, I think chat roulette is a great idea. It reminds me of the early days of Twitter, I wish they had an open API.

Top Favorites

• Laws of Source Code and Software Development
• Repetative Recursion
• Technology and Politics
• Being a Better Rails Developer
• Programming Memes
• Developer’s Perpetual Todo List

Fav Tutorial

• Anatomy of a JavaScript Bookmarklet
• Dynamically Create HTML Elements with JavaScript
• Grinding Griffon
• The 1KB CSS Grid
• Download Twitter Profile Images Using Ruby
• Jamming with Ruby YAML

Memorable Quotes

• Quotable Calacanis
• Quotable DHH
• Favorite Programming Quotes 2009

Twitter

• Twitter Ruby Gem
• Twitter Business Model
• The Three Laws of Twitters
• Twitcode
• Songs in Code

Twitter Conversations

• Remote Debug Your Thinking Process
• All Code is Inherently Evil
• The Mayor of Dead Space

Year in Review

• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005

Retweet November 2009
Retweet October 2009
Retweet September 2009
Retweet August 2009
Retweet July 2009
Retweet June 2009
Retweet May 2009
Retweet April 2009
Retweet March 2009
Retweet February 2009

• @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.

Software Development

• I can haz codebyte!
• Hacks are in the eye of the debugger.
• Is there a werewolf in your software, then why do you need a silver bullet?
• I know HACK is a four letter word but it is not a bad four letter word.
• It is okay to paint by numbers but its something different to code by numbers. I code by polynomials.
• If it doesn’t matter either way, why not choose the option that is easier to implement, cleaner to design, and friendlier to use.
• Content is the killer app.
• They say those who can’t do, teach. Well, those that can’t create content, aggregate.

Team Leadership

• The sooner you adapt, the wider your lead.
• Don’t nickel-and-dime old business assumptions.
• When leading the way, be sure to get out of the way. As a leader you don’t want to be a roadblock or bottle neck to the troops.
• A manager should do two things: give precise tasks and expect precise results.
• Don’t confuse opinion for advice, don’t confuse advice for a plan.
• Even a detailed schedule can’t predict the future.
• Sometimes schedules are another way we lie to ourselves.
• Time does not run on a schedule.
• A good skill is to identify the skillset of your team, a better skill is to improve those skills while leveraging them to the fullest.
• Little baby steps add up to giant leaps for mankind.

Product Placement

• In Windows, when you overwrite a file instead of replacing it without a trace, the OS should put a copy in the recycle bin first.
• You can learn a lot about someone by taking a look at their FarmVille farm.
• Is Twitter lists just another metric for users to have a pissing match on Twitter? If comparing followers wasn’t enough…
• Why is it that installing ImageMagick is a longer and more painful process than upgrading OSX?

Self Dev

• In certain task I am worth my weight in gold, in others I am worth my weight in lead, but I do my best to avoid tasks were I cost my weight.
• Many people will ask for out of the box ideas, but they don’t want ideas too far away from the box, more like ideas hovering around the box.
• It’s okay to have your cake and eat it to, as long as you bake the cake yourself…
• Be a double agent of change.
• On man’s problem, is another man’s opportunity.
• Authenticity has no substitute.
• Not failing fast enough is the biggest failure.
• Failure is when you don’t learn from it.
• You have to kill it to win it.
• Fail frequently, fast, and furious
• If I played baseball I would be the GM.

Questions

• What is the opposite of a trophy wife?
• Do you have a failure resume?
• Is Facebook to big to fail?
• How many tweets does it take to get a trend?
• There are wrinkle free pants, when will we see tangle free headphones?
• Which is best Happily Ever After or Happily Ever Now?
• What does it mean to ‘trust the chicken?’
• Do you have to sell out to get buy in?
• If you are not passionate, who do you expect your team to be passionate?

Quotes

• Good ideas are simple. – @jason
• Money is the shortcut. – @garyvee
• Great entrepreneurs don’t have better ideas, they have better process. – Eric Ries
• Pay attention to pixels. – Bump Technologies Job Listing

The script is small and pretty concise that it can speak for itself. I use my Twitter credential to log on and query for the 40 most recent replies. For each reply download the user’s profile image.

require 'rubygems'

gem 'twitter', '=0.4.1'

require 'twitter'
require 'open-uri'
require 'find'

twitter = Twitter::Base.new(username, password)
replies = twitter.replies(:count => 40)

replies.each do |status|
  user = status.user
  image_url = user.profile_image_url
  image_name = image_url.match(/([\w_]+).(\w\w\w)$/)
  file_path = "profile/#{image_name[1]}.#{image_name[2]}"

  # Did I already download this image?
  unless File.exists?(file_path)
    File.open(file_path, 'w') do |output|
      # Download image
      open(image_url) do |input|
        output << input.read
      end
    end
  end
end

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?