By Ben | Published:
October 22, 2009
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past few years thinking a lot about simplicity. Simplicity is one of those things that we mention a lot in passing, but it’s also something that we don’t dedicate much effort to achieving.
We develop software where 60+% of the functionality is never or rarely [...]
Also posted in simplicity, usability |
By Ben | Published:
August 5, 2008
I often hear people use the words effective and efficient interchangeably. While the two definitions are close, they are not exactly the same and they have different contexts where each is appropriate.
Here are the two definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary…
The way I usually differentiate between these two terms and their accompanying mindsets can [...]
By Ben | Published:
October 24, 2007
I don’t want your icon on my desktop.
I don’t want your icon in my taskbar.
I don’t want you to run on startup.
I don’t need a quicklaunch icon.
When in doubt, just ask.
By Ben | Published:
October 30, 2006
It is easy to fall into patterns of practice in almost every profession. Software is arguably one of the worst when it comes to following stated “best practices” and looking for process frameworks or formalities that guide various stages of the software development lifecycle.
In theory, this is all great. In practice, it (mostly) sucks. The [...]
By Ben | Published:
June 7, 2006
Why is it that a general best-practice is to have strong passwords when most applications don't support them? I tend to use (very) strong passwords, but it seems like I'm discouraged more often than I can utilize them.
Is it really too much to ask?
By Ben | Published:
March 17, 2006
This article made me smile.
Why can’t we just all do things this way?
It’s possible, it’s easier, and it makes sense.
I can only hope that one day we’ll all wake up from the nonsense that we’ve believed for so long and ask “What the hell were we thinking?”
By Ben | Published:
March 13, 2006
About a week ago I purchased the Getting Real book from 37signals. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this book to come out for a while now and I can say that it was well worth the wait. The book (available only as a pdf) is entertaining and very thought provoking. I can say that I [...]
By Ben | Published:
March 8, 2006
I’ve been playing more and more with Ruby On Rails lately and it has been a very mind-opening experience with regards to many of my ideas around application architecture. There are many wonderful things about Rails, but the idea (and implemenations) of “convention over configuration” is demonstrated beautifully within Rails.
My development experience has been primarily [...]
Also posted in .net, architecture, rails |
