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There is a Bug on this Code
Software is a serious business. Fatal bugs have been around since at least the 1980s, and a decade-old report estimated the annual cost of bugs at $60 billion. Tech companies spend millions on political lobbying. Opponents argue over labor shortages and H-1B visas.
So how about we take some time out to give three cheers for a little levity?
Go Fetch! (JavaScript Fetch API)
Long ago, we briefly brushed upon the topic of what has made jQuery such a valuable part of the web developer’s toolset for such a long time – namely, a cleaner interface for interacting with the DOM, and the $.ajax abstraction over XMLHttpRequest.
These days, I would go a step farther and discuss how it has positively influenced browser APIs. jQuery offered a way to find elements using their css selectors, and this eventually gave us document.querySelector and document.querySelectorAll. More recently, browser developers have taken another page from jQuery’s playbook and introduced a new, Promise-based API for making asynchronous requests, and so much more – Fetch.
Why go Fetch? Let’s take a look.
Picasso vs. Cezanne: Experimental Innovation and Software Development
In 2006, Wired Magazine published an article entitled “What Kind of Genius Are you?” The article highlights the work of economist David Galenson (currently a professor at the University of Chicago). Galenson is famous for postulating that artists fall into two classes: Conceptualists and Experimentalists. Conceptualists innovate radically, rapidly, and usually at early ages. The Wired article calls Picasso the archetype of Conceptual Innovation. Picasso upended modern art by inventing Cubism in his early 20’s.
Why Refactor?
Refactoring is necessary. Especially on, though not limited to, large or complex projects developed over an extended period of time (say, more than 4 months). To understand refactoring, you must understand a few core concepts about software development:
It is a collaborative endeavor involving many technical roles (developers, testers, designers, database architects) and multiple business roles (the users, the project managers, client stakeholders, product managers, etc). A software project does not come from a single “pen” but from multiple authors, all writing the same book.
Why Would Developers Hire Developers?
Why would developers or other technology-driven companies hire a development firm? It happens more often than you think, and maybe not for the reasons you would expect. Sometimes developers (by which we also mean in-house teams at technology companies) always use outside software developers because they do not actually build stuff in-house. More often than not, however, we find that companies with in-house software engineers find themselves in need of outside help for a variety of reasons, five of which we’ll address here.
The Best Interface is an Enchanted Object
Book Review: Let’s look at a pair of books that contain deep critiques of the world where more and more of our devices’ functionality is exposed only through interfaces on screens, and lay out a path to a more human-centered technological future filled with devices that engage us more richly in a wide variety of ways instead of asking us to keep poking at black glass rectangles with our stubby fingers.
Music and Design – a love story
I sat on the hotel room floor, surrounded by guitars, keyboards, and gadgets, doodling on a complimentary Holiday Inn notepad. Dad tinkered with a motherboard as his soldering iron glowed, delicately balanced on the edge of an ashtray. The smell of pork chops, rice and beans wafted through the air as mom worked her magic on our portable double burner stove. I sat on the floor, glued to the television. It was that very moment the iconic M came to life and made its beautiful debut.
Are Hearables the Future of IoT?
Will hearables be the next big thing? One recent study by Juniper Research suggests that it could reach $5 billion in revenue by 2020. That’s quite a leap from the current revenue of roughly $1 billion worldwide. But what are hearables and why would you want to develop this kind of IoT device?
Always Forward, Never Straight
You’ll see three kinds of hikers on the trail: The ones who seem to float on their tippy-toes from the crest of one granite stone to the next; the ones who seem to swim up through the leaf and boulder strewn path like fish gracefully navigating invisible waters; and those who look miserable — jolted with every step as the stutter and drop and climb, gracelessly jarring knees and ankles and backs.
Wearable Technology and the Rio Olympics
Aside from the obvious examples, wearable tech has been all over the place at the Rio games. Olympic boxer, Tommy Duquette, for example, trained using a sensor that he helped develop. Worn on the boxer’s wraps, the sensor is designed to calculate the number of punches a fighter throws, as well as the speed, striking intensity and type of punch (jab, cross, left or right power).
A Cocoa Color Mystery
Handling color spaces in Cocoa and Quartz just takes a little familiarity to be done properly.
Designing Connected Products
Someday, you’ll be sitting at your desk, minding your own business.
Your boss, or a client, will come in and start explaining this cool new IoT project you’ll be working on. As you listen, the timeline splits:
In the Darkest Timeline, no one on your team knows about what’s discussed in this book. Your boss/client starts specifying requirements that sound cool to them, but are really bad ideas in ways that aren’t immediately evident. Your team builds the project as it was specified, and it fails in the marketplace because of mistakes that could have been avoided.
In the Prime Timeline, you’ve read this book.