Tagged with 'programming'

Tech talk

I’ve been thinking lately about how many of the talks at tech conferences are bizarrely impractical. For a counter-example, Rands has this seemingly un-radical suggestion

This is the presentation I want to see at the next conference: in a room full of people, anyone is welcome to walk up to the mic and plug their laptop in to the projector. They’ll be asked to complete three simple tasks:

  1. Send a mail to a friend
  2. Find something on the Internet
  3. Save a bookmark or an image.

I would be fixated.

I’d love that.

If developers are the builders, why don’t we talk more about craft? Why are there so many conference presentations about lofty topics, and so few about dispensing with down-to-earth, day-to-day chores?

One of my favorite BarCamp sessions was a group “show-and-tell”—we took turns introducing the rest of the crowd to one tool in our arsenal. I talked about FireBug, someone talked about Google Spreadsheets, someone else talked about Selenium. I’d love to see more of that kind of thing.

If you’re planning a conference, and can’t squeeze one “practical nuggets” session into the schedule, why not?

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Podcast tracks to iTunes Library script

For the past few days, I’ve subscribed to the excellent Song of the Day podcast at KEXP. I wanted to move the “good ones” to my iTunes Library…

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Obscure Rails bug: respond_to format.any

I found an odd bug in Rails today. Odd, in the sense that it's not so much broken, as working in a way that's different than one would expect.

In a controller…

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Ruby, modules, super and alias_method

In general, I really like the way Ruby handles class inheritance & module mix-ins. But, recently, I found an odd behavior - maybe a bug? - in Ruby 1.8.6 (the Ruby shipping with Leopard)…

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Busy weekend!

Josh & Liz in Leopard Ts So… Leopard came out on Friday. We stood in line for an hour or so at Utrecht’s A Mac. The “big unveiling” included T-shirts and champagne—plus we…

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Labor Day

I'm not sure how it found it's way to me, but I received a bulk job solicitation this morning that included this gem:

We're not looking for a typical 9-5, Mon…

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"I Would Rather Be A Jazz Programmer"

I love this idea. Possibly, because I played in my high school jazz band. (Saxophone, fyi.)

I think the other downside to recruiting for a "rockstar programmer"…

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