Writing helps me think.

2010 has come and gone. I’ve shipped a few projects, each a number of times. I’ve registered dozens of domain names and dropped a few of the older ones. I’ve started (but not finished) a dozen spare time projects. I’ve had hundreds of new ideas, and a few of them were even interesting. I’ve learned a lot, but not enough (it’s never enough). I’ve expanded my horizons and gotten stuck in ruts. I’ve gained weight and I’ve lost weight. ...

When you describe a design to a group of people, each person imagines something different. Depending on your story and the individuals, understanding may vary wildly. And if it differs enough, the result is chaotic–unpredictable and often negative. You need to fit how you show your ideas to different groups of people carefully, and notice when you your story isn’t hitting. For your closest team members you can wave your hands and scrawl ideas on a chalkboard. For people you work less frequently, you need more detail: proper drawings and clean wireframes. For non-technical clients you need even more, polished, functional prototypes and pretty drawings. ...

Boost’s Filesystem library is an incredible resource: it abstracts paths, directories, and stat results. It simplifies coding shell problems in C++, it’s portable, and is maintained by a large community of contributors. The one downside of Boost is that some of its newer libraries are poorly documented. ((Something I want to contribute to.)) Until I have time to get involved in the Boost project, I’m going to post examples here. Traversing a directory tree ...