By any other name

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

http://www.marco.org/2011/10/04/iphone-4s-by-any-other-name

Marco Arment asks:

Would as many people be disappointed if Apple had released the same device but called it the iPhone 5?

I think it would have been worse, with the 3GS Apple established that the_S_ moniker is just a (substantial) spec bump, but jumping to the next sequential number is expected to include a physical change.

The source of the disappointment is that they took longer than normal and I think it was because of the software stack they were building: iCloud or maybe Siri took longer than expected.

And talking about software, that new Cards App seems somewhat of a filler to not underwhelm that much. It’s funny that they don’t even list it on the Built-in Apps .

Fire!

Monday, 3 October 2011

Today I got up as usual to go to work and while I was preparing the breakfast sandwiches the fire alarm began to blare.

Not fun.

I turned off the coffee machine and the griddle as I didn’t want to cause more work for the firefighters. Grabbed the first sweater I found, waited for the wife to get the keys and her cellphone and headed outside.

Even after taking so long to get out of the apartment we were the first ones out if the building… nice achievement I guess. Maybe many were still asleep and were caught by surprise.

Better still the firefighters where already there, and about 40 minutes later they told us we could go back in.

The source of the fire was an old car on the underground parking lot, about 5 stalls from mine. No other was harmed as far as I could tell.

I did learn that I need to keep a couple of things closer to the entrance.

  • My keys and wallet.
  • Weather-apt jacket/sweater.
  • A zip-lock bag with other id documents.

Funny things that did happen:

  • A couple had enough time to get their guitars and other miscellaneous bags and boxes.
  • Finally had some time to talk with our next door neighbors and catch their names again :P
  • Poked some fun at the condominium corporation’s stupid fines made up to grab money from us the owners. (Is that even legal?)

10 immutable laws of mistakes

Monday, 26 September 2011

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-immutable-laws-of-mistakes/2633

Hot on the heels of the On Making Mistakes article I shared before, I found this very interesting list of “laws” of mistakes. Check it out.

  1. Everyone makes mistakes
  2. Not all mistakes are bad mistakes
  3. Mistakes not seen by others are not mistakes
  4. Ignorance does not excuse your mistakes
  5. Mistakes occur at the very worst time
  6. Mistakes beget mistakes
  7. Mistakes made with computers propagate faster and cause more damage
  8. Mistakes of inaction are mistakes nonetheless
  9. Failing to own up to your mistakes is a mistake
  10. Failing to learn from your mistakes is a mistake

My favorites: 3 (learn but don’t expose yourself), 6 (keep calm), 7 (I’m a computer engineer after all), and 10 (it’s human to err, to learn wise).

On Making Mistakes

Thursday, 15 September 2011

Mistakes, we all have made them and what’s important about them is the lessons we learn from them which like the ones from Ryan’s story , but it also struck a chord because it reminded of a similar experience I went through when I decided to go for walk on a beach when I was a kid.

Then beach turned into a small hill, and the walk into a hike.

The hill turned into a cliff, and the hike into exploration.

And then there was no more trail.

I found myself trying to climb down the cliff into the rocks near where the waves broke to see how far I could get.

I knew that on the other end of the cliff there was another beach and I would be safe then, but during the ordeal I asked myself “why?” many times: when I was half way down the cliff and almost fell, when I felt tired and didn’t know how much longer I would have to walk between the rock wall and the water, when the waves broke against the rocks right beside me…

And then, similar to what happened to Ryan, I saw the end of the cliff. On that moment the ordeal had become and adventure and the cliff was mine, and wasn’t that hard after all. And of course I only told my friends that side of the story: the tale was always told as a tale of courage and adventure :)

I even found the equivalent to about 10 bucks between the rocks, I was a millionaire :)

I did get in trouble for disappearing for so long, but oh well.

It’s fun to look at things from a different perspective, and Ryan’s tale helped me do just that. Go try, fail and learn:

Would be coders. Please listen to me. DO THINGS THE WRONG WAY Fuck them up. Badly. 2 months from now you should look back at the code you’re writing today and laugh at it. If you don’t, you’re not being ambitious enough, and you’re being a wuss that shuttles himself up to organ donor.

Pet Projects and Hiring Decisions

Thursday, 15 September 2011

http://ayende.com/blog/102403/pet-projects-and-hiring-decisions

The subject of gauging a programmer’s quality has come up around me a couple of times lately, and in every discussion the use of code samples from pet projects seems like a no-brainer because not only you can see the quality of the work but also automatically knowing that the programmer as a passion for her craft.

This is something that’s becoming more common in the programming world and that I knew but hadn’t put into practice until recently .

But now I recommend it to anyone that asks how to get better at programming: “go open a github account and push anything that you are proud of”.

The great benefit of Github (actually git and the other vcs) over only having a private pet project is that it also shows history, which in turns gives a glance to your ability to solve problems and bugs when they appear.

Pay it forward

Thursday, 15 September 2011

http://steveblank.com/2011/09/15/the-pay-it-forward-culture/

the Pay-It-Forward culture, the unspoken Valley culture that believes “I was helped when I started out and now it’s my turn to help others.”

I always had this kind of relationship with my friends during University. We’d help each others and ask nothing back but (sometimes implicitly) to do the same for other, of course it was a rather small group so favors came back to you pretty quickly.

I miss that.

Hopefully I’ll find that again soon here in Canada.

Programming for kids

Thursday, 15 September 2011

http://www.happynerds.net/

Love the name: Happy Nerds :)

Children today are surrounded by software from their game consoles, over their music players to their mobile phones. By teaching them how to program, we can show them how to become an active and defining part of this new world we live in. Programming is a creative and challenging occupation with immediate feedback, which is highly suited to satisfy children’s natural curiosity.

Kids need to learn to program

Thursday, 15 September 2011

http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/169225.html

Where I work people handle a lot of data daily, most of the time the data is treated as a new experience every time it needs to be processed. Repeatability and efficiency are nil . This article has the solution.

I want to use the software that a mass-algorate society would develop: sane and hackable, because everyone would know what computers fundamentally do and how to make them do what they want.

In this utopian_mass-algorate society_, writing a scripted solution for the problems each person needs to solve would allow them to engage in more fulfilling activities or, oh surprise, optimize other parts of the business.

Utopian? yes. Maybe some day when children learn to program from young ages .

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