best practices

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!...

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

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

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!

A Good User Interface has high conversion rates and is easy to use . In other words, it’s nice to both the business side as well as the people using it. Here is a running list of practical ideas to try out. (via GoodUI )

**Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design ** (via Vitsœ | Good design ) Good design… … is innovative … makes a product useful … is aesthetic … makes a product understandable … is unobtrusive … is honest … is long-lasting … is thorough down to the last detail … is environmentally-friendly … is as little design as possible Born in 1932, Dieter Rams is one of the foremost industrial designers of the 20th century....