Viewing profile — douglasputnam

DiP3 is a good book, if you are already familiar with Python. It's not for newbies. In fact, when I didn't know Python I disliked DiP3 to the point of making rude and ignorant comm…

I 2nd that emotion. If you are interested in Web apps, you might try creating with an old school CGI ecard site. It will introduce many basic concepts: working with the file system…

I hear lots of smart people arguing that education can be improved by fired low performing teachers, breaking unions, enforcing discipline, raising test scores, etc. What I don't h…

The Happy Hacking Pro 2 is great if you like a compact 60 key keyboard. The Escape and Control keys are positioned perfectly for Vim and Emacs, so you don't have to bother with rem…

"word of mouth will kill the phone" Whenever we hear a prediction about "word of mouth" stunting the sales of an Apple product, we have to take that statement with an iPhone-sized …

Mr. Olsen's essay is what we commonly call a rant. Though he doesn't fully reveal in his tirade why he perceives Jason Fried as a dangerous enemy who must be defeated, we can deduc…

More power to 37Signals for having the good sense to set their own price and value for their own product. There's nothing controversial about asking $9.99 for a simple app that you…

The title to this post is intentionally misleading and sensational. Using the word "cheats" is cheating and trolling.

For someone who espouses grand principles (Rework), David is taking the low road with his petulant ad hominum attacks. Calling Ballmer's stage presence uncool is a little disingenu…

News items that contain the word "killer" in the title are usually composed by uninformed local TV news writers, or by hack bloggers who want to drive easy fanboy traffic to their …

cashto's post was a "serious" effort to disperse the cloud of dogma surrounding unit testing and TDD. I hardly think that lashing back with "poppycock" is driving the conversation …

The last time I checked, no one had to pass an IQ test to use the Internet. Maybe it's time for Twitter (and other social media--you know who you are), to require potential users t…

Every PHP programmer has lamented PHP's TMA (Too Many Ampersands) design, inconsistent method naming, function parameters order, etc. But PHP is the 800 pound gorilla with 15 years…

The lawyer is going to have to wrest that $5k from the mouths of those orphans in Kenya...you know, the orphans the alleged thief spends his spare time raising money for.

I've met Rasmus once, when he generously spoke at our humble community college during his tenure at Yahoo. He came across as pragmatic and opinionated. In his writings and presenta…

As a teacher I can attest that it's impossible to find decent programming "text books" for Python, PHP, etc for classroom work. Most of the books you see on the bookshelves at Grea…

Wow, what's really excessive and shocking is that a Gawker employee has the stones to claim he's a journalist.

Considering we're gossiping on PG's dime, are we allowed to describe his Nerd's manifesto as "a steaming pile of stereotypes"?

It's all good.

Paying for something to get something "free" is not free by any definition. The title is misleading and smells spammy.