Viewing profile — Tekhne

This. One thousand times this. The author's subjective judgements of other people aside, from my point of view, mandatory pair programming is a plague on the software industry. If …

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Tra…

This analogy is flawed, and I think represents the exact problem developers experience with non-developers. There's an underlying assumption that we know what walking or a taxi are…

My advice is that you read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Happiness-Guide-Developing-Importa...

This downgrade may just be the first sign of real problems to come. For detailed coverage of the coming US financial storm see the documentary I.O.U.S.A. from former U.S. Comptroll…

I absolutely 2nd this suggestion! It was really fascinating. There were some dry parts, but mostly I couldn't stop reading (actually, I did the audiobook).

Actually, bash completion DOES help with long arguments or any arguments. It's true that you have to invest the time to write a completion script tailored for the commands you're i…

OT: We're so used to tech buzzwords that sometimes we don't realize our secret language sounds odd. Just look at the title of this post literally. It's pretty hilarious.

If you read the book "Learned Optimism," you'll see that the research shows this to be a bad strategy. All things being equal, you're more likely to succeed if you have an optimist…

Yea, I for one would welcome fast, comfortable, ubiquitous trains. Also, it would be nice if America could really embrace ideas like work from home or Results Only Work Environment…

> ... Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs ... Let's say that I'm an American with a gas guzzling SUV. For the sake of discussion, what would you …

2,500,000,000 barrels / 150,000 barrels per day / 365.25 days per year = 45.6308464522 years

I don't think it's fraud. It's breach of contract.

You're right. In fact, I have my vimperator setup so that it automatically does this for Google Reader and GMail, and only for the relevant tab (i.e. if I hit "v" to view a Reader …

Does this really work? I've Googled around, and it looks like some/most of the junk mail you do this to won't actually make it back to the sender, but will just be disposed of by t…

Turn your outside, rear view mirrors out on your car to completely expose your blind spot. When done right, you should have a continuous field of vision by scanning your eyes from …

I second that. I'm a vim lover anyway, but vimperator has been awesome for me. I had RSI problems and this really helped me to reduce my usage of the mouse. Like vim, there's a lea…

Reading on the toilet is actually bad for your lower intestines. It can lead to health problems. You want to minimize (within reason) the time spent sitting over a hole like that.

I like to start with the underlying structure of the data as well, which for database-driven web sites means the schema. "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I sha…

Unfortunately, I don't have source in front of me, but I've read some research that indicates that subvocalization is actually necessary for full comprehension, and that claims to …

There's an alternative to the Readability tool called Clippable: http://brettterpstra.com/2009/11/03/clippable

This article follows a line of reasoning about quality which seems to lead to the conclusion, in part, that Apple makes superior products. My question is "compared to what?" The co…

I would add to this that it's important to view optimism and pessimism in the face of risk as a conscious choice. Which view you take is your strategy for acting in the face of tha…

Actually, I think vim comes with pretty good Python support by default. I'm using vim 7.1 and there's, for example, a good python.vim syntax file that came with.

There seems to be some Sun-focused FUD and Linux-focused fanboyism flying around here and on Kirk's blog. Obviously, that's no way to evaluate competing solutions. We need facts. W…