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  Zen Mind, Programmer’s Mind “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” - Suzuki As programmers of an application or feature, we quickly develop our own preconceptions as to how the software should work. Every... Posted May 21 2008, 07:14 AM by "Hello World" - The SlickEdit Developer Blog Feeds Filed under: programmers, suzuki, amp, preconceptions, possibilities

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  Crash Responsibly As programmers, it is our responsibility to ensure that when something goes horribly wrong with our software, the user has a reasonable escape plan . It's an issue of fundamental safety in software error handling that I liken to those ubiquitous airline... Posted May 18 2008, 10:00 AM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: insult to injury, job, programmers, crashes, exclamation point, error messages, software error, spectacular fashion, disaster recovery, disasters, amp nbsp, last thirty years, crisis points, airline safety, signals, bugs, fundamental web, safety cards, web usability

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  Is HTML a Humane Markup Language? One of the things we're thinking about while building stackoverflow.com is how to let users style the questions and answers they're entering on the site . Nothing's decided at this point, but we definitely won't be giving users one of... Posted May 14 2008, 12:59 AM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: rite of passage, presentation markup, presentational markup, programmers, podcast, sling, gestalt, syntax, markdown, cheatsheet, questions and answers, little bit, markup language, markup languages, wikipedia, nonsense, merit badge, nancy boy, textile, joel spolsky

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  Cleaning Your Display and Keyboard Let's say, just as a hypothetical, you're sitting at your computer, casually chatting up a fellow programmer. You begin to describe some bit of code, then bring it up on your display to illustrate. You want to highlight some particular part of... Posted May 12 2008, 06:00 PM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: reflection, fellow programmer, programmers, germs, gesture, potential health, keyboard, keyboards, health hazard, peter wilson, dr peter wilson, toilet seats, sticky bun, toucher, disgusting bacteria, lavatory seat, mental image, replay, slow motion, fingers

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  XML: The Angle Bracket Tax Everywhere I look, programmers and programming tools seem to have standardized on XML . Configuration files, build scripts, local data storage, code comments, project files, you name it -- if it's stored in a text file and needs to be retrieved and... Posted May 12 2008, 12:59 AM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: soap xml, endless sea, programmers, uri, readable data, angle brackets, scenarios, schemas, configuration files, winston churchill, denny brown, amp, lt, form of government, nails, data storage, democracy is the worst form of government, programming tools, sledgehammer, code comments

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  I'm Pro-Choice... Pro Programmer Choice, that is Not too long ago, Don wrote : The three most “personal” choices a developer makes are language, tool, and OS. No. That may be true for somebody who works for a large commercial or open source vendor, whose team is building something that fits into one... Posted May 10 2008, 09:20 PM by Interoperability Happens Feeds Filed under: source vendor, tagline, programmers, craftsman, psyche, oses, ego, java programmer, kernel, zealotry, flame wars, customer problems, skil, geek, last time, personal choices, language tool, languages tools, good grace, open source

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  BASIC and the Rubik’s Cube Remember when the Rubik’s Cube was still new and BASIC was cutting edge? Well, for that early generation of geeks, of which I was surely a member, it was unavoidable. You just had to write your own BASIC program to solve the Rubik’s Cube.... Posted Apr 30 2008, 06:09 AM by "Hello World" - The SlickEdit Developer Blog Feeds Filed under: programmers, basic program, geeks, cutting edge

• 244 views 0 comments 0 ratings

  Your Session Has Timed Out How many times have you returned to your web browser to be greeted by this unpleasant little notification: Your session has timed out. Please sign in again. If you're anything like me, the answer is lots . What's worse is that you're usually... Posted Apr 16 2008, 12:59 AM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: privacy concerns, programmer, programmers, security feature, necessary evil, web interface, five minutes, http cookie, newborn babe, content type, web applications, text html, existence, protocol, session id, session timeouts, web request, web server, flavors, performance reasons

• 20 views 0 comments 0 ratings

  How to Melt Your Web Server Wow. Self-employment has made Jeff bold! Incendiary, even. We Don’t Use Software That Costs Money Here: It’s tempting to ascribe this to the “cult of no-pay”, programmers and users who simply won’t pay for software no matter... Posted Apr 10 2008, 09:50 AM by Ian's Blog Feeds Filed under: programmers, pirates, t pay, cult, self employment, amp, money, use software

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  Paul Graham's Participatory Narcissism I have tremendous respect for Paul Graham. His essays -- repackaged in the book Hackers and Painters -- are among the best writing I've found on software engineering. Not all of them are so great , of course, but the majority are well worth your time... Posted Mar 21 2008, 10:00 PM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: programmers, best writing, anecdote, scavenger hunt, book hackers, painters, thirties, subset, software engineering, prestigious groups, few days, boss, ambitious people, palo alto, joel spolsky, founders, absorption, team building exercises, corporate team building, corporate team building exercises

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  Mort means productivity Recently, a number of folks in the Java space have taken to openly ridiculing Microsoft's use of the "Mort" persona, latching on to the idea that Mort is somehow equivalent to "Visual Basic programmer", which is itself somehow... Posted Mar 15 2008, 08:57 AM by Interoperability Happens Feeds Filed under: microsoft, long lasting solutions, visual basic programmer, programmers, usability, damn thing, efficient solution, einstein, java space, productivity, elvis, working solutions, summarization, pragmatic programmer, wizards, problem domain, implementation

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  UsWare vs. ThemWare Ted Dennison left this astute comment in response to Do Not Listen to Your Users : Generally when I go talk to users, it is to educate myself enough to become a user like them. Then I can see what needs doing, what needs streamlining, reorganizing, rearranging... Posted Feb 28 2008, 11:59 PM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: ted, shoes, writing software, spirit, programmers, jargon, gap, software developers, dennison, disastrous results, user interface, categories of software, building software, circles

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  Code Isn't Beautiful I was thrilled to see the book Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think show up in my Amazon recommendations. It seems like exactly the type of book I would enjoy. So of course I bought a copy. Unfortunately, Beautiful Code wasn't... Posted Feb 20 2008, 11:59 PM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: brian kernighan, programmers, compilation, ruby, rare exception, variance, bentley, amazon, yukihiro matsumoto, charles petzold, standout, jon bentley

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  So I Don't Like Perl. Sue Me. A number of folks commented on the last post about my "ignorant and apparently unsupported swipes against Parrot and Perl". Responses: I took exactly one swipe at Perl, and there was a smiley at the end of it. Apparently, based on the heavily... Posted Jan 25 2008, 03:53 AM by Interoperability Happens Feeds Filed under: microsoft, programmers, programming language design, hell, betas, preference, humor, design artifact, blog, syntax, smiley, aesthetic preferences, inroads, bigotry, swipe, swipes, practical reality, bleeding edge, crowd

• 272 views 0 comments 0 ratings

  Size Is The Enemy Steve Yegge's latest, Code's Worst Enemy , is like all of his posts: rich, rewarding, and ridiculously freaking long . Steve doesn't write often, but when he does, it's a doozy. As I mentioned a year ago , I've started a cottage industry... Posted Dec 23 2007, 11:00 PM by Coding Horror Feeds Filed under: half a million, wyvern, programmer, programmers, multiplayer game, death star, java code, software development project, developers, steve yegge, computer scientist, rational reaction, rational software, shorter form, loc, worst enemy, privilege, doozy, crowd, open source