:: rushabh ::

Software and Cakes

"Unfortunately, most software products never have a description. Instead, all they have is a shopping list of features. A shopping bag filled with flour, sugar, milk, and eggs is not the same thing as a cake. ... Having the proper ingredients but lacking any knowledge of cakes or how to bake, the ersatz cook will putter endlessly in the kitchen with only indeterminate results."

-- Alan Cooper

Surface Area of Design

"Many people approach designs by asking, "What might the user want to do?" If you start with that question, the set of answers is infinite. You end up with interfaces that have 80 or 90 methods, or 50 or 60 interacting classes. Look at Swing's JComponent class, for example. It has well over 200 methods. JButton, as a JComponent subclass, inherits those methods. But someone dealing with a button cares about five of those 200-plus methods most of the time. The other methods are interesting in odd cases, so they should be set aside somewhere. But they're all in there together and you don't know what to touch.

There is a phenomenon I call surface area of design, which is what you must understand about a design to know which part you care about. Does the fact that there are more than 200 methods mean anything to the setText() method? You must know something about those 200 methods to know the answer to that question. You have to know what to ignore. Many people say they don't need to look at all those other methods. But you do need to know if they will interact with the methods you do care about. The problem is you need to know enough about those other methods to know you don't need to understand them."

-- Ken Arnold

How good software goes bad

I apologize for being yet another forwarder-blogger. But this one was too good to pass up. I've been there and there and there. I swear the brown/black dude is modelled after me. (No, not really, I have never known or met Hans Bjordahl, but I've done things similar to the brown/black dude in the comic)

Reading on Saturday nights

The only sad thing is that I'm usually the person on calling and saying "What are you doing READING ...".

Nucking Futs

I was introduced to jibjab today (by my CEO even, so much for developer productivity :) (-1 on productivity, + several hundred on fun)).

Here is one of the funniest ones I saw on jibjab. Given that my sample was only about a half hour long, I'm sure there are even funnier ones out there. Enjoy.

300: Visceral, splatter-tastic, and screamingly homoerotic

No, that line wasn't mine, its quoted from The Stranger, a local Seattle newspaper.

But it does sum up the movie exceptionally well. Overall, my reaction to 300: I want my money back. For the theatre: $10, $5 for parking, $50 in lost wages. Buxfer me.

This opinion in the Toronto Star by a professor of hellenistic history is hilarious. You'll enjoy it more if you've watched the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, save your money and prevent the mass murder of your braincells.

And here is a fantastically condensed version of 300 by Jim Massey

Some site template changes

If you're reading this using RSS, you probably don't care.

However, I did make some changes to the blog css to make it very similar to my other (older) site at keeda

Here is a link for the rss people.
[Edit] Needless to say, comments would be appreciated.

Dreaming in Code

I picked up Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. Its a narrative about a failed software project (Chandler) that was meant to revolutionize the way we handle and interact with out personal information. I haven't been in the industry for that long (~3 years) but a lot of it really, really rings true. I'm not done with the book yet, but am thoroughly enjoying what I've read so far.

Kristin has a new blog

http://kstech.wordpress.com/

Read away!

Is it time?

Your Declaration of Independence



Cheesy, but I'm a sucker for those things.