We’re close to a day when we’ll have the Minority Report interface for managing our branches and merging.
We’ve gone from the wonderful 2D and whiteboard drawings/DOT graphs to some interesting 3D visualizations coupled with alternative interfaces:
Not that I think most people need 3D to get meaningful work accomplished, but I think it would make the lives of developers managing interesting branching and merging scenarios
I’ve heard many different ways of explaining the exclamation mark but this one is new…
CSR says:
We need to make your password more secure in order to submit it, so everything will stay the same except now there’s going to be an exclamation point on the end, ok?”
Customer says:
“that’s the baseball with the bat on top, right?”
I love some of the other things wikipedia had to say about the exclamation mark:
In typesetting or printing (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the exclamation mark is called a screamer or bang. “Bang” is also common in computer programming slang. Less common names in publishing include “gasper”, “startler”, and even “dog’s cock”.
This post inspired by a hard working gent at http://www.scout.com.
You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a successful pair programming session. Once you have, you’ll probably feel that programming on your own is incredibly unproductive. Oh… and it’s also great for improving your communication skills; something us programmer/coder/developer types often lack.
Pair Programming is the process where two developers work together on the same code with one person typing and both constantly discussing the requirements, design and code. Pair Programming also provides an excellent opportunity to hone your communication skills. To be “in the zone” when pair programming requires that you continually verbalize your ideas in a way that your pair partner can follow your thinking and stay engaged.
Dear internet, please send me a Mini-Z LED Desk Lamp
I love that these LED lights consume something like 7-10 watts compared to 40+ for a traditional light. See more LED lamps from Koncept.
HHKB Professional HG JAPAN is simply amazing. Who doesn’t love a keyboard with keys painted by the “special Urushi brush made from the tender hairs of a virgin.” CNet Asia
Look at that hand painted and gold dusted keyboard. Popgadget has this to say:
I’m not sure why anyone would pay US$4240 for a blank keyboard (when you can get one for US$90), but since this is Japan we’re talking about here, the question is clearly rhetorical.
According to CNET Asia’s Mobile Ojisan, the Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional HG Japan (love the name!) is the product of a collaboration between Fujitsu PFU and Daitetsu-Yatsui Urushi Workshop, the latter a traditional lacquerware maker. Each key is handpainted with 10 coats of Japanese lacquer, then sprinkled with gold dust.
If anyone wants to go halvsies on this, let me know.
For more info on the awesome Happy Hacker Keyboards visit Eric Bergen’s post on The Keyboard of Champions
Jeff Atwood posted about LCD Progress today pointing out how to make sure you are setup for using your shiny new LCD monitor. He lists the following:
Always use the DVI port to connect your LCD.
Set your monitor’s refresh rate to 60 Hertz.
I would like to add the following for Windows users:
ClearType enhances your display by smoothing the edges of screen fonts. ClearType works especially well on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) devices, including flat screen monitors and laptop computers.
Enjoy!
To do this, we reviewed notes from exit interviews, cross referenced annual reviews and ultimately came up with 178 voluntary terminations from people that would have been considered in the top 20%.
To try and keep focused on macro issues, we consolidated the responses and placed them into categories:
- Money
- Unchallenged
- Too Challenged
- Dead Company
http://dumblittleman.blogspot.com/2006/09/why-top-employees-quit.html
It’s really interesting to see “Too Challenged” listed in this group.
Mac OS is not Java-friendly. It doesn’t support any wireless toolkits, so no Java ME development is possible, and the recent decision to drop the Cocoa bindings sends the clear message that Apple doesn’t care about Java. I want to work on a Java-friendly operating system. http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000411.html
I’m still reluctant to buy a shiny new MacBookPro because I keep seeing comments from developers that they have a very hard time switching. What is your take?
[Developers] also want M&Ms for breakfast and a pony. Joel On Software: Private Offices Redux
I don’t often agree with Joel’s theories of software development management but things are changing… Joel, give me M&M’s for breakfast and a pony and I’m yours.
Buildix is an agile development platform on a disk. Those folks at ThoughtWorks decided that creating a Knoppix based distribution that is a “load and run” development server was a great idea; and I agree. Chris Read, a ThoughtWorker known for his Build Master tendencies, describes Buildix as:
The whole point of Buildix is to help any Java based Agile Development Project get up and running as quickly as possible buy providing them with pre-configured and integrated version control system, continuous integration framework, wiki and issue tracking system. Introducting Buildix - The Agile Development Platform on a disk.[sic]
Buildix looks great to me. I’ve often wondered if it’d be better/easier to manage your SCM systems on a per team basis rather than making a Perforce/Subversion repository handle multiple projects. With virtualization coming along as it is, it might soon make sense to just create a “project server image” that runs in UML, VMWare, etc for each project. I know I’m looking into virualization as a possible solution for managing dependencies with FIT tests, how far can we run with this?
