Clippings

layervault: I’m very excited to talk about a technique that we’ve started using at LayerVault. We call it Progressive Reduction. (…) How does one guide a new user from on-boarding, to low proficiency, to high proficiency? With progressive reduction, the UI adapts to the user’s proficiency. (…) Your proficiency in a product will decay over time without usage. As such, the proficiency reflected in the UI decays over time. Essentially, your UI regresses without usage. ...

we-are-star-stuff: If you’re interested in an IT degree and career, coding can be pretty intimidating. From understanding common programming languages to deciphering programming from developing, learning to code is necessary in today’s IT industry. The ability to implement a variety of programming languages can help you decide which coding career path is correct for you. Additionally, comprehending multiple popular programming languages will make you more marketable in the IT industry at large. [via] ...

Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. (…) Since both willpower/self-control and cognitive tasks drain the same tank, deplete it over here, pay the price over there. One pool. One pool of scarce, precious, easily-depleted resources. If you spend the day exercising self-control (angry customers, clueless co-workers), by the time you get home your cog resource tank is flashing E. (via Your app makes me fat — Serious Pony )

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know – Contributions Appearing in the Book Act with Prudence by Seb Rose Apply Functional Programming Principles by Edward Garson Ask “What Would the User Do?” (You Are not the User) by Giles Colborne Automate Your Coding Standard by Filip van Laenen Beauty Is in Simplicity by Jørn Ølmheim Before You Refactor by Rajith Attapattu Beware the Share by Udi Dahan The Boy Scout Rule by Uncle Bob Check Your Code First before Looking to Blame Others by Allan Kelly Choose Your Tools with Care by Giovanni Asproni Code in the Language of the Domain by Dan North Code Is Design by Ryan Brush Code Layout Matters by Steve Freeman Code Reviews by Mattias Karlsson Coding with Reason by Yechiel Kimchi A Comment on Comments by Cal Evans Comment Only What the Code Cannot Say by Kevlin Henney Continuous Learning by Clint Shank Convenience Is not an -ility by Gregor Hohpe Deploy Early and Often by Steve Berczuk Distinguish Business Exceptions from Technical by Dan Bergh Johnsson Do Lots of Deliberate Practice by Jon Jagger Domain-Specific Languages by Michael Hunger Don’t Be Afraid to Break Things by Mike Lewis Don’t Be Cute with Your Test Data by Rod Begbie Don’t Ignore that Error! by Pete Goodliffe Don’t Just Learn the Language, Understand its Culture by Anders Norås Don’t Nail Your Program into the Upright Position by Verity Stob Don’t Rely on “Magic Happens Here” by AlanGriffiths Don’t Repeat Yourself by Steve Smith Don’t Touch that Code! by Cal Evans Encapsulate Behavior, not Just State by Einar Landre Floating-point Numbers Aren’t Real by Chuck Allison Fulfill Your Ambitions with Open Source by Richard Monson-Haefel The Golden Rule of API Design by Michael Feathers The Guru Myth by Ryan Brush Hard Work Does not Pay Off by Olve Maudal How to Use a Bug Tracker by Matt Doar Improve Code by Removing It by Pete Goodliffe Install Me by Marcus Baker Inter-Process Communication Affects Application Response Time by Randy Stafford Keep the Build Clean by Johannes Brodwall Know How to Use Command-line Tools by Carroll Robinson Know Well More than Two Programming Languages by Russel Winder Know Your IDE by Heinz Kabutz Know Your Limits by Greg Colvin Know Your Next Commit by Dan Bergh Johnsson Large Interconnected Data Belongs to a Database by Diomidis Spinellis Learn Foreign Languages by Klaus Marquardt Learn to Estimate by Giovanni Asproni Learn to Say “Hello, World” by Thomas Guest Let Your Project Speak for Itself by Daniel Lindner The Linker Is not a Magical Program by Walter Bright The Longevity of Interim Solutions by Klaus Marquardt Make Interfaces Easy to Use Correctly and Hard to Use Incorrectly by Scott Meyers Make the Invisible More Visible by Jon Jagger Message Passing Leads to Better Scalability in Parallel Systems by Russel Winder A Message to the Future by Linda Rising Missing Opportunities for Polymorphism by Kirk Pepperdine News of the Weird: Testers Are Your Friends by Burk Hufnagel One Binary by Steve Freeman Only the Code Tells the Truth by Peter Sommerlad Own (and Refactor) the Build by Steve Berczuk Pair Program and Feel the Flow by Gudny Hauknes , Ann Katrin Gagnat , and Kari Røssland Prefer Domain-Specific Types to Primitive Types by Einar Landre Prevent Errors by Giles Colborne The Professional Programmer by Uncle Bob Put Everything Under Version Control by Diomidis Spinellis Put the Mouse Down and Step Away from the Keyboard by Burk Hufnagel Read Code by Karianne Berg Read the Humanities by Keith Braithwaite Reinvent the Wheel Often by Jason P Sage Resist the Temptation of the Singleton Pattern by Sam Saariste The Road to Performance Is Littered with Dirty Code Bombs by Kirk Pepperdine Simplicity Comes from Reduction by Paul W. Homer The Single Responsibility Principle by Uncle Bob Start from Yes by Alex Miller Step Back and Automate, Automate, Automate by Cay Horstmann Take Advantage of Code Analysis Tools by Sarah Mount Test for Required Behavior, not Incidental Behavior by Kevlin Henney Test Precisely and Concretely by Kevlin Henney Test While You Sleep (and over Weekends) by Rajith Attapattu Testing Is the Engineering Rigor of Software Development by Neal Ford Thinking in States by Niclas Nilsson Two Heads Are Often Better than One by Adrian Wible Two Wrongs Can Make a Right (and Are Difficult to Fix) by Allan Kelly Ubuntu Coding for Your Friends by Aslam Khan The Unix Tools Are Your Friends by Diomidis Spinellis Use the Right Algorithm and Data Structure by JC van Winkel Verbose Logging Will Disturb Your Sleep by Johannes Brodwall WET Dilutes Performance Bottlenecks by Kirk Pepperdine When Programmers and Testers Collaborate by Janet Gregory Write Code as If You Had to Support It for the Rest of Your Life by Yuriy Zubarev Write Small Functions Using Examples by Keith Braithwaite Write Tests for People by Gerard Meszaros You Gotta Care about the Code by Pete Goodliffe Your Customers Do not Mean What They Say by Nate Jackson \

People like us do stuff like this Seth’s Blog “There is no more powerful tribal marketing connection than this.”

What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences. : AskReddit I just saw my reflection blink. — marino1310 I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy there’s somebody on my bed.” — justAnotherMuffledVo The doctors told the amputee he might experience a phantom limb from time to time. Nobody prepared him for the moments though, when he felt cold fingers brush across his phantom hand. ...

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Part 1: Why Microsoft’s reorganization is a bad idea Part 2: The uncanny valley of a functional organization Part 3: Services, Not Devices is the best way forward for Microsoft (via stratēchery by Ben Thompson )

Dan Shapiro » Shark Tank: The 3 worst startup mistakes made on TV’s best reality show Negotiate Here’s the simple rule. If someone makes you an offer, it’s because they’re interested. If they’re interested, you should negotiate. Not accept; negotiate. Know what you want (…) have a limited array of tricks up their sleeve, and you should have considered all of them before setting foot in that room. Stake size Controlling interest Number of Sharks investors A royalty Help Contingencies Don’t ever leave the room ...

Dan Shapiro » How to read a patent in 60 seconds Step 1: Skip the title Step 2: Skip the drawings Step 3: Skip the abstract Step 4: Skip the specification Step 5: Find the independent claims, and read them Step 6: Back to skipping – toss the dependent claims [unless the independent ones are bogus/obvious] Useful for checking “requests for prior art” in Ask Patents

Over the course of a year, I researched and created ZXX , a disruptive typeface which takes its name from the Library of Congress’ listing of three-letter codes denoting which language a book is written in. Code “ZXX” is used when there is: “No linguistic content; Not applicable.” (via Making Democracy Legible: A Defiant Typeface — The Gradient — Walker Art Center )

Sketchnote Text, Italic and Bold were built from hundreds of hand-drawn glyphs, and variations on glyphs . These added characters allowed Delve to create Contextual Alternates — multiple variations on each character which help recreate variations in handwriting and can be accessed with tools that support this OpenType feature, like InDesign. (via The Sketchnote Typeface – Rohdesign – Designer Mike Rohde )

App Annie – App Ranking, Analytics, Market Intelligence No SDKs We simply pull the data on your behalf via iTunes Connect, Google Developer or Amazon Appstore accounts. No recompilation, no added bugs.

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. Voltaire (via Wikiquote ) (en) *The best is the enemy of the good.\ (pt) O óptimo é inimigo do bom.

Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. Donald Knuth (via When optimal matters ) ...

When optimal matters | Playing with Objects The rules of optimization (…) When you are thinking on making an optimization: First time: Don’t do it! Second time: Don’t do it yet! Third time: Ok, but you first profile and measure, and then optimize

And here’s how to do it in your own presentations: Craft the Beginning Develop the Middle Make the Ending Powerful (via Structure Your Presentation Like a Story – Nancy Duarte – Harvard Business Review ) See also the related TED presentation: Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks | Video on TED.com

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1932-2012) Be proactive Begin with the end in mind Put first things first Think win-win Seek first to understand and the to be understood Synergize Sharpen the saw … and the eighth habit is to: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs Old, but timeless!

TEDxPortsmouth – Dr. Alan Watkins – Being Brilliant Every Single Day: (Part 1) (Part 2) Your performance and results… … depend on your behaviour … which depends on what you think … which depends on how you feel … which depends on your emotions … which depend on your physiology (…) the dominant factor in the thinking <=> feeling loop is feeling (…) feelings are the awareness of your raw emotions ...

Apenas na adolescência a criança apresentará a anatomia do pênis de um adulto, com a glande completamente exposta. É só acompanhar e deixar a natureza agir, se a criança tiver um bom jato urinário e não apresentar histórico de infecções. Clécio Piçarro (via Cirurgião fala sobre fimose na infância ) See also: The Phony Phimosis Diagnosis \ Normal development of the prepuce: Birth through age 18