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How regressions happen
Working with software is frustrating, and working on software doubly so, because things up and break. Seemingly without warning or cause. One day the software is fine, the next day it flat-out doesnāt work. Even worse, one day it has this one bug or missing feature and the next day the bug is fixed or […]
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My 2019 routine, your mileage may vary
I’m having a moment where I feel like I’ve got a winning wakeup/morning formula š. Wake up early, around 6:30am. Feed the cats so they don’t barf in protest later. Skim the tweets and feeds for a few minutes while the brain boots up. Write for five, fifteen minutes or so. Organize and think about […]
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Sometimes you have to compile a list of known issues and ship
āātis better to have known a software bug than to have never had a software at allā Lord Alfred Tennyson, except not Software that never ships never has issues. Draw the line, get it out there. Celebrate a little and recharge your batteries. Now fix the important stuff; it may not even be the bug […]
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Supporting remote work when you’re co-located
Dave Rupert, Everything I Know About Remote Work. Me, everything I know about working with remote workers when you’re co-located: Every single meeting has a video link. If one person is remote on a meeting, it’s optimal to have everyone on the video call. Meeting rooms with video equipment are good, but don’t put everyone […]
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Writing to a past version of myself
Left to my own devices, I write in the second person. With apologies to my high school English teachers, I have a justification for this: I’m writing to myself from one, five, ten, twenty years ago. I’m writing a thing on the skill of reading framework code. I try to keep in mind that I […]
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Your father’s janky graphs these are not
You can Graphviz on the web now. Roughly-drawn sketch style, slightly Swiss modernism, or even in the design tool Figma. Mostly enabled by a port of Graphviz to Web Assembly via emscripten. This is one of the futures I was promised.
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Automotive function determines form
I generally think function should have a strong influence on form, if not determine the form outright. I like to use cars an example of this, but Iām having trouble reconciling the past of āfunction over formā with the future. Back in the days of peak car culture (1960s), the Jaguar E-Type was (and currently […]
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Social media in the morning? Whichever.
Austin Kleon recommends skipping the news/social media/blinky lights in the morning. Iāve found this works great for me, and sometimes not! Iām a morning person, so Iāve got that going for me. If Iām already in a groove, have ideas about what to write or code on, and jump in first thing, this advice works […]
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Blogging, like writing, is challenging
The thing which makes blogging difficult is not engagement, analytics, finding just the right theme, curating to a newsletter, managing comments, finding reach after the demise of Google reader, etc. The hardest part is showing up, every day, writing. The hardest part is writing! The second hardest thing is hitting the publish button on a […]