Embrace Life: Always wear your seat belt.
via wimp.com
just some more awesome
Uncle Bob re: "Software on the Cheap"
Imagine that you aren’t a programmer, but you have a clever idea for a new website that’ll make you a zillion dollars. You’ve storyboarded it all out. You’ve worked out all the details. Now all you need is some high-school kid to zip out the code for you. Right? Hell, you could pay him minimum wage! The little twerp would be happy to get it!
That tragic comedy is altogether too common. Too many people have borrowed money against their father’s retirement account to fund a terrible implementation of a good idea. Appalled at how much the reputable firms charge per hour ($100 or more) they go looking for a cheap solution.
“After all, this software is simple.” Or so the reasoning goes. “It’s not like we’re trying to send a rocket to the moon or anything. And, besides, those expensive guys were just out to cheat us. Software just isn’t that hard to write.” Uh huh.
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The best description of Ruby Meta-programming
At one point in time, everyone using Ruby thought meta-programming was some sort of magic. But in a post-Rails world, it is increasingly easy to help folks understand that all of this “voodoo” we do is really just making use of public method calls provided by Ruby objects that allow you to modify Ruby itself.
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Getting "256 colors" on Terminal.app on Snow Leopard
ir_black is the best Vim color scheme. Get it here: http://blog.infinitered.com/entries/show/8
But, colors are jacked on Terminal.app on Snow Leopard. Here is how you fix it.
- Install the latest version of SIMBL for Snow Leopard. http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php
- Install this Snow Leopard 64 bit version of the TerminalColours plugin. http://github.com/timmfin/terminalcolours/raw/master/TerminalColours-SL-64bit.zip
If have old version of TerminalColours install, they may conflict. Just remove them from:
- /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins or
- ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
You should see a "More . . ." button in your Terminal.app's preferences.
Finally, if you have been starting up Terminal.app in 32 bit mode, you can stop doing that now.
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Being a Hero is killing your business
Reason #2 – it’s not scalable
It’s a sad and unfortunate truth that there are only so many hours in the day – even for the Hero. When you first start out, 10 or 12 hours a day might be enough for you generate a good revenue stream. Things are going well – you’ve got a good reputation and your heroics are making your customers happy. You’ve got some opportunities to grow!
So you start working longer hours, weekends become a great opportunity to work even more just to keep the growth going. You hire some extra help, but they can’t do what you can do and just cause you to work even more to make up for their lack of not being you. But there’s only 24 hours in the day – at some point, even if you don’t break down or snap, you will literally run out of time and be unable to grow any more.
via aspirekc.com
The ability to scale at the correct time is probably the most important skill for a person, system and organization to have. The catch is the "at the correct time" part.
Do it too soon, and you risk never being successful. Do it too late, and you die a slow death.
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Estimation anti-patterns: Fractal Estimation
Fractal Estimation
After the scope of the project has been constructed, some stories may be considered too large to fit into an iteration, so the team decide to split them into the smallest possible deliverable slices, re-estimating each slice. Of course, this is a bit like measuring the coast of Britain. The epic which was 13 points at project inception becomes 16 points of features, and 23 points of stories by the time it’s done in the sprints. Analysts wonder where this extra scope came from, while advocates of burn-down charts tuck the growing scope away somewhere where it won’t be noticed.
via lizkeogh.com
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Hofstadter's law
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
via en.wikipedia.org
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The Ninety-ninety rule
In computer programming and software engineering, the ninety-ninety rule is a humorous aphorism that states, "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."
via en.wikipedia.org
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