Better Living Through Thinking

OS X Focus-Follows-Mouse Debate

Fri, 25 Apr 2008

Steve Yegge

<http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-follows-mouse-debate.html>

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The Work of a Critic

Fri, 04 Jan 2008

Transcription of Anton Ego's ending monologue (from Pixar's Ratatouille)

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The Perils of JavaSchools

Thu, 14 Jun 2007

Joel Spolsky

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html>

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The Paradoxical Commandments

Mon, 31 Oct 2005

Dr. Kent M. Keith

<http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/#paradox>

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On Cows

Mon, 16 May 2005

Doug Robinson, Deseret News, 2001

"The reason they use ropes is because *cows don't come when you whistle*. They ain't dogs. For one thing, their brains are vestigial organs, like the appendix. Cows are cud-eating machines whose one redeeming quality is that they turn ordinary grass into steaks and Happy Meals."

Computer Security and Liability

Mon, 15 Nov 2004

There are no real consequences to the vendors for having bad security
  or low-quality software. Even worse, the marketplace often rewards low
  quality. More precisely, it rewards additional features and timely
  release dates, even if they come at the expense of quality.
  --Bruce Schneier, CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2004

<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/11/computer_securi.html>

The Princess Bride

Mon, 12 Jul 2004

Prince Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work. But I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped!

Count Rugen: Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

Fed Up

Tue, 17 Jun 2003

"We are saying that innovation and creativity is only going to take place in labs with men in white coats. All that innovation and knowledge that has existed in the fields passed from one generation to generation is being ignored."

The Hundred-Year Language

Mon, 16 Jun 2003

Paul Graham

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html>

Writing software as multiple layers is a powerful technique even within applications. Bottom-up programming means writing a program as a series of layers, each of which serves as a language for the one above. This approach tends to yield smaller, more flexible programs. It's also the best route to that holy grail, reusability. A language ...

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Being Popular

Mon, 16 Jun 2003

Paul Graham

<http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html>

There is one thing more important than brevity to a hacker: being able to do what you want. In the history of programming languages a surprising amount of effort has gone into preventing programmers from doing things considered to be improper. This is a dangerously presumptuous plan. How can the language designer know what the ...

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