I wasn’t very happy with where my last post ended. It all boiled down to “I wish Facebook was open source” or “I wish App.net had worked out better”. Part of that was that I spent the whole post operating on the assumption that underneath any application using this social network would be, well, 1 central model that everything would use. I think that assumption may be flawed. What if there wasn’t a central model behind all of these applications, but rather just a single protocol creating multiple models of people we connect to and how.
Category: General Commentary
Generally commentary on tech-related issues.
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What is a social network anyways?
When my friend Warren posted his issues with commenting on posts shared across social networks, it got me wondering how commenting would work in my hypothetical “next-gen” social network. My initial write-up on the idea focused mainly on the idea of the main content itself, so it got me wondering how to integrate things like comments into a feed-based social network. As I thought about how comments might fit into this new concept, I also started wondering about just what purpose comments served in a social network. I don’t mean in a “don’t read the comments” sense, but rather what role are comments serving in a social network? (more…)
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If “it’s not that important” why are we even bothering at all?
Have you ever been working on something, and had a thought how something should be done, started to talk it out with somebody, only have the phrase “it’s not that important” get used? If it’s not important enough to think about doing well, why are we thinking about doing it at all then?
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What’s your expertise?
Work anywhere long enough, and you’re going to become the <something> person. From that point on, all questions, advice, etc. on that topic by default go to you. In my experience, this isn’t usually the result of some deliberate action to make a person the <something> “expert”, it’s the result of the work they get assigned and end up doing. The bigger questions are, what are your areas of expertise, what would you like your areas of expertise to be, and what are you doing to make the 2 previous answers line up?
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This is why nobody likes you
I hardly do anything in Windows anymore. My work machine is Ubuntu, and my personal machine is a Mac. The only Windows computer I ever really use is an old machine at my church. However, that doesn’t protect me from having to deal with files made in Windows. And those things are starting to become the bane of my existence. (more…)
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I screwed up, you shouldn’t too.
1 of the things I work on regularly was originally created with a fairly consistent data set. We had a very good idea of what fields were going to be in the data. As a result, we thought we knew where exactly we needed to check for null data, and when we didn’t need to know. Then the data set expanded, and the new data wasn’t nearly as consistent as what we started with. That’s when we realized that we were very much wrong in thinking we knew what needed null checks. (more…)
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What happens when dogfooding isn’t an option?
Dogfooding is an important part of software development. Google “dogfooding blog post” and you’ll have reading material for weeks. But what do you do when it’s tough to dogfood your own product? What do you do when dogfooding your own product isn’t even a viable possibility? (more…)
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People shouldn’t have to “hunt logic”
I’ll admit to being guilty of making this joke. You know, somebody questions why things work or function a certain way, and then there’s that snarky little line, “you’re hunting logic”. It seems hilarious, until you realize just what you’re pointing out. Namely, “Yes, this is stupid, and yes this doesn’t make any sort of discernible sense, but we’re going to keep doing it anyways.” Not so funny now is it? Being told that “you’re hunting logic” is basically an admission that you’re right, but that nobody wants to take on the hordes of people who put things into this situation. (more…)
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Wedding planning tips from a software developer (part I)
Having just gotten married recently, I tried a lot of stuff to help make the planning process easier, and had a few thoughts on things that did (and didn’t quite) work that I wanted to share. The first thing I wanted to mention were thoughts about planning and organization. As it turns out, wedding planning isn’t just a 1-person process, and so some degree of organization and coordination winds up being needed. (more…)
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You’re always going to need it
One thing I’ve noticed the more I work on anything is that reusability is everything. Even if you’re slapping together some simple little script that is intended for 1 specific thing to do some piddly little task, odds are you’re going to need to dig it back out and adapt or convert it for something else. In short, you’re always going to need it. So what does this mean to you as you write any sort of code? (more…)