Blogs

I find that software developers struggle to sketch diagrams of their software. They get lost in the specifics of diagraming techniques, in choosing from the many available tools, or in the futility of drawing diagrams at all. I understand their pain, as there are many standards for diagrams and many (often obtuse) tools for drawing with. It’s not very motivating to have a sea of choices, none of which looks particularly appealing. ...

As designers, software developers, and business geeks we thrive on a few things. We seek inspiration. We obsess over details. We work long hours. And we need focus. Computers and software have evolved to the point where nearly anything is possible. It’s an amazing threshold, as we are rarely limited by the hardware, OS, and languages. We’re mostly limited by our own ability to produce. We are the weakest link in our productivity. ...

As a software designer, I love to design software. As software developer, I love building software. When I dream of better things, I funnel my ideas into new projects. When I don’t have time for all of my side projects, the projects pile up in a corner and gather dust. And when a side project is an unfinished publishing platform it gets in the way of writing. I’m intensly interested in writing and publishing on the web. There are just so many possibilities for saying interesting things and making the presentation of those things more useful. I’ve dedicated a chunk of my consulting time to making beautiful interactive sites for non-profits, and I use a slice of my spare time for maintaining a number of my own sites (and those of friends and family). I believe that what we’re seeing on the web today is a shadow of what we will publish in the future, and it excites me. ...

I wrote my first computer program when I was 8. It was a simple adventure game written in BASIC, a mess of GOTO and PRINT statements. I saved it to tape a few times, proud enough of my first creation that I didn’t want to lose it. And despite what I didn’t understand my mind exploded with ideas. I continued to write games and curios into my early teens. I wrote text adventures and arcade ripoffs. I hacked at biometric data collection using a busted set of paddles and mixed mode graphics. I designed and built a large (but clunky) side scrolling adventure game using only a set of customized fonts. I plagiarized code from magazines and hacked at my machine until the wee hours of the night. ...

I review a lot of code these days. It’s an incredible way to nudge a team of bright people toward greatness. It allows me to look at problems from the outside with a perspective of experience and distance from the low level design. The perspective is important too, and I see things that I often miss in my own code. You see, we’re easily blinded when we’re too close to the problems we’re trying to solve. ...