Viewing profile — smithbits

Yes. I just had a bad experience with an online shop. I got the thing I ordered, but the interaction was bad so I sent a note to their support email saying "I like your company, bu…

The short version is I got lucky. The slightly longer version is that at the small company I was doing tech lead things because I learned I could get more done to help people by he…

For me it was management. I was an SDE who started caring more about the users of my code than about the code itself and that led me to a team lead position and that led to managem…

It's worth keeping in mind that lean manufacturing and all the interesting things that Toyota did that get written up are about building cars. In software the equivalent process is…

His shelf seems to be an almost perfect superset of mine, the only obvious thing I don't see is Fire In The Valley by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, a very nice history of the…

Networking. Every time I see a non-technical friend have to know anything about the DNS to set up a website it makes me cringe. And while we're at it, why isn't my new laptop onlin…

There's a product called the Efergy True Power meter that does exactly that. It measures mains electricity, wirelessly reports to a central server and shows you real time and histo…

When this happens in dictionaries it's called a "ghost word" and dates back to the 1800's. Here's the wikipedia page on the topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_word

I think the author is making an excellent point about needing better math in journalism. An article in the NY Times yesterday about online shopping China had this line (pulled from…

I'm a little confused by the conclusion that "It is up to donors to do their research and donate in a way that will maximize the support they provide for charities." I gave a 10 ye…

I think there are plenty of really really good programmers who are lousy negotiators. For these people a 15% cut could easily be made up for by a good agent. It's not perfect for e…

How big was the game board? It doesn't seem like running life backwards would be an obvious thing. If I have a 3 by 3 grid with the center turned on I think there are 8 choose 3 or…

This isn't specific to Redline, but do take a look at the RoarVM http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr/renaissance/ a many core research implementation of the Smalltalk VM that does some ve…

Seems like the obvious PR thing for Roddy McCuish to do is go and have his meeting with Martha and her father at the school, for lunch.

And here's the IMF study it's based on http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/Berg.htm

How much of this is that the company was hugely influenced by the founder? Steve Jobs was famous for making sure all the machines at the NeXT factory were painted the same color an…

We're all familiar with the "phone / phone / half day puzzle fest" interview technique but has anyone ever done any testing on it? At any large company like Google or Microsoft it …

It's true, but you'll be competing with bubble-based companies for talent. Why do I want to work for a reasonable, growing small business with it's customers and profits when I can…

Here's a low quality video of the factory from back in the day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfUKEu7sJ0 (The copy of the video is low quality that is, the original production val…

What are you like? Do you enjoy digging really really deep into a problem? Perhaps a big company that provides the stability to work on a problem for years is the right place? Do y…

"Software engineers of corporate America are wired in a way that promotes fear. It hurts creativity and growth." I'm horrified to say that I just can't get past that bit of hyperbo…

My quest for languages that say "Yes" ended with assembly. I started in BASIC and found the strait jacket it imposed much too restrictive. Then Pascal was the big teaching language…

"The truth is that for some it does and for some it doesn't." A pleasantly reasonable thing to say.

But to actually be the next Bill Gates he or she will have to not get picked. Then 30 years from now the story will be "If only I'd gotten that intership at Google I'd never have s…

I thought Penny Arcade broke this back in 2007 with the piece "The Microsoft Zune: 2006-2006" http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/10/