Juixe Techknow

From time to time I blast tweets on software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else I’m working through. 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

• Programming is more about problem solving than coding, just like being an author is more about storytelling than writing.
• Next time your significant other starts nagging, throw an IllegalArgumentException!
• I want the web to evolve to a stage where flash is not required! It’s 2010 for God’s sake, why we still using plugins in browsers!?
• why do I have to tether gadgets and string along services just to catch a call?
• Patents? We don’t need no stinking patents.
• When life gives you users, make customers.
• For programmers everything is as easy as alpha, beta, and gold master.
• Good debugging techniques go a log way in and out of the debugger!
• Like the Free Masons, I am part of a secret society of digitari and conspiracy theorists and computer repairmen known as the Free Hackers.
• I am so WYSIWYG!
• If privacy settings are difficult to edit they are hard to implement, enact, and enable correctly.
• Privacy setting should be transparent not secretive and misleading.

Team Leadership

• You always get further faster with less effort if you work with what you got.
• The next big thing usually sneaks up on those waiting in line to ride the current thing.
• Mo money mo ways to solve mo problems.
• Bad apples introduce bad seeds.
• Litigation stifles innovation.
• Technology is changing so fast that I have obsolete gadgets the unopened packages I bought them.
• I’m coming up so you better get this project started.
• As companies grow, they lose acceleration and focus, but depend on momentum and size.
• I have to call into our all hands meeting tomorrow. Since I have to call in, I’ll be all ears at the all hands meeting.
• A great idea in the mind of someone that can’t or won’t do anything about it is like an orphan.
• When companies can’t create engaging products and new markets they create bogus patents.

Product Placement

• Twitter needs a reliable picture service, as reliable as Twitter, but Twitpic just needs to go away.
• The #newtwitter is like the the #oldtwitter plus HTML crack.
• I wish Twitter was like survivor and we can kick some twits of the service.
• This is how much AT&T sucks, I’m tethering my T-Mobile Nexus One with my AT&T iPhone to tweet this!
• Apple press events are as large as sporting events! Apple should televise them in Pay-Per-View.
• Steve Jobs is a mad genius, you gotta buy his hardware so that you can buy his software and along the way pay for a horrible service plan.
• The new iPod mini is one gadget closer to the Dick Tracy wrist watch phone.
• Apple cares more about design than market share, and that’s why users pay a premium.
• Steve Jobs would make a great James Bond villain.
• And the Grammy for the Album of the Year goes to… Autotune!
• AT&T should rebrand itself as FU&U!
• In addition to Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, and Form document types, @google Docs should add a Gantt Chart!

Quote

• We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: We know where you are, we know what you like. – Eric Schmidt
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. – Steve Jobs
• Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. – Steve Jobs
• Get into jiggle mode. – Steve Jobs
• So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated. – Bill Gates

Cash Angels

• School experience is not in tune with the current job opportunities. College should be more like a series of Y Combinator funding cycles.
• If there is a angel investment bubble, everybody should cash in before they can cash out.
• When you see startup accelerators with names like 500 ACME Startup Founders Camp you can be sure that there is an angel investment bubble.
• Zuckerborg has dropped out of college and he is pledging $100,000,000 for kids to stay in school.

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

• 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

Rasmus Lerdorf, the Danish creator of the PHP programming language, recently tweeted the following bit of hubris.

For all the folks getting excited about my quotes. Here is another – Yes, I am a terrible coder, but I am probably still better than you :)

That sounds like something that DHH would say, who also happens to be a Danish programmer. In one hand he did invent a new programming language, in the other it was PHP. In one hand he made web programming accessible to thousands of developer, in the other hand the code produced by most of these developers is unreadable and unmanageable.

Of course, a great many folks took the troll bait and commented on the validity of the tweet. My favorite comment was from
Entropy on Reddit.

Kenny G plays the saxophone better than I do, but that provides little solace for his countless victims.

I was not able to find additional background to this tweet, but I can only imagine he tweeted it in good fun, and not in my milkshake brings all the developers to the yard, and their like, it’s better than yours.

In this conversation tweet snippet I rant about dead code when someone noted that in a Murphy’s Law sort of way, you don’t need dead code until you delete it. Thank goodness for version control systems.

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.

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

• 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