17 Sep 2002

Tue, 17 Sep 2002

12 Reasons Developers Shouldn't Worry About The Future

The Joel on Software Forum - If you're good, don't worry: 12 Reasons

My personal favorite is this:

5. Development may involve solving fewer technical problems in the future and more time spent stepping back to say "what are we really trying to do here". A good developer is always doing this. A bad developer just wants to write code. One of the real advantages of experience isn't that it's done right; it's that it's done right without 3 painful iterations.

That's what I did today at work. Anymore, I do that everyday. That's the nature of dealing with a business that 4 years into it, is still nascent. Content management was a phrase that didn't exist when I got involved in that business. I wonder what will be the next nascent business for me? Regardless, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Posted at: 21:53 | permalink

decafbad picks up the Winer-Hemenway Cage Match

I've watched with amusement as the battle over RSS heats up. This morning, decafbad summarized the true nature of it better than I could.

I've spoken with both Morbus Iff and Dave Winer via email on several occasions. I find Morbus much easier to get along with and agree with Kevin Burton's assessment. In the end, despite the fact that the defacto engineering culture would lean toward rationality over emotion, it's emotion that provides the impetus to put products out the door.

And really, does anybody believe that Morbus wants to kill Dave? I don't, but the way he says it is highly amusing, and that amusement could help to defuse a tense situation if people would just relax a little. Surely, I can't be the only one out here that finds joking about my own demise at least mildly amusing. To me, the seriousness that some folks display in considering their own demise is indicative of a larger cultural problem - talking about death being tabboo. I was going to link to Dave Winer's post about it this morning, but he's just edited that away. Sigh. Message to Dave: revisionist PR is going to come back to haunt you.

Posted at: 13:30 | permalink

CMU's Web Services Course

This may not be a revelation, but CMU has a course in web services.

Posted at: 13:07 | permalink

NY Philharmonic Commissions Memorial Piece By John Adams

John Adams, composer of such favorites as Short Ride in a Fast Machine, has been commissioned by the NY Philharmonic to create a piece memorializing 911 [ny times]. I last heard Adams work when the Pittsburgh Symphony did Short Ride about 6 years ago or so. Unfortunately, the symphony's web site seems to have no record of that performance, and I can't recall who was conducting but one of the interesting things that I discovered from the Times piece is that Lorin Maazel is now music director of the NY Philharmonic. Of course, he was music director here first! Yeah, Pittsburgh may suck, but it's symphony is still disproportionately phenomenal relative to the size of the city. I wish I could be in NY to hear this piece. I love Adams work.

Posted at: 08:51 | permalink

Charles Simonyi Leaves Microsoft

The NY Times reports that Charles Simonyi is leaving Microsoft to form a startup that will try to commercialize on his research into intentional programming. Simonyi, among other innovations, is the inventor of Hungarian notation, a shorthand system used by C and C++ programmers to determine what types are assigned to variables without looking at the variable's declaration.

Posted at: 08:04 | permalink

Small Leaps In Genes Battling Muscular Dystrophy

In what seems like a small victory for gene therapy, scientist have succeeded in reversing the effects of muscular dystrophy in laboratory mice [msnbc]. One can only hope to see similar successes in humans. I wonder if similar approaches would yield similar results in ALS sufferers?

Posted at: 00:28 | permalink

Price of Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Dropping Fast

The Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is getting discounted rapidly by retailers. Buy.com now has the Sharp Zaurus at only $333 which seems like a great deal considering the massive power (linux and java) and options (802.11b and CDPD) combined with awesome usability. Back when I first reviewed the Zaurus, which I believe was about 6 months ago, it was selling for $499 at staples. Staples now has it at $399.

Posted at: 00:22 | permalink