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Rands In Repose
There's been lots of buzz on the topic of whether or not you should learn to code. As an engineer, I don't have unbiased thoughts on the matter. I tweeted Jeff Atwood's piece because, well, I agree that it's pretty...
You wake up in a small, enclosed glass cube. There's a bed, a toilet, a radio playing music, and other bare essentials, but no door. You have no idea why you are here or what's going on. After a few...
April 2012 represents the 10th anniversary of Rands in Repose. I don't normally celebrate these occasions, but serendipity has given me something to talk about. As you might have noticed, I've recently made a few design changes to the site....
Back in the early 90s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third largest software company, but, more importantly, it was a legitimate competitor to Microsoft. Philippe Kahn, the...
Apple is maintaining a difficult balance with the iPhone and the iPad. On one end, they appear to want to release each product yearly. The first four iPhones were either announced or arrived in early June, until the iPhone 4S...
I am told that the manner by which others understand that I am busy is when my writing coherence suffers. This primarily occurs in email when whole words are dropped, sentences become jumbled, and logic falls on the floor. Rands,...
My introduction to Scott Berkun was his amazing talk at Webstock 2008 on the Myths of Innovation, based on one of the three books he's published in the last decade. I remember his talk not only because of the compelling...
A few years ago I wrote a piece that romanticized the state of the sky falling. The article is not about fixing disasters, it's about preventing them, but no matter how much you prepare, disasters happen. The romance surrounding disasters...
For a word that can so vastly change the fortunes of a company, it's worth noting that no generally accepted definition of the word design exists. This means when your boss stands up in front of the team at that...
Over a half a million unique visitors stumbled on Rands this year and as the year winds down, I wanted to take a look back at the year in articles. These are articles that turned out to be popular or...
The fundamental goal I have for a wallet via its design is that it prevents me from randomly collecting crap. Years of folding leather wallets with myriad pockets and flaps all yielded precisely the same result: a Costanza-sized monstrosity that...
Being computer literate means getting asked to help. I'm happy to help. I believe the less you fear your computer, phone, or tablet, the more you'll get out of it, so, absolutely, How I can help you? However, this free...
Early in the design discussion for the logo for the latest Rands in Repose charity t-shirt, Robert Padbury responded to my early design feedback: "You know, I realized something when I was thinking about this the other day - People...
When I'm presenting to a large audience, I have three internal states: "I'm screwed." I have not yet begun the presentation, but I'm imminently starting. This phase sucks. Every possible screw-up I've ever performed or could perform is running through...
It's hard to pick a single best work by Joel Spolsky, but if I was forced to, I'd pick The Joel Test. It's his own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of software, and when anyone asks me...
