Tag Archives: development

My delicious.com bookmarks for March 2nd through March 10th

My delicious.com bookmarks for February 12th through February 14th

  • Scientists Agree: It's in His Kiss – "Over 90 percent of human society engages in what, if you get right down to it, seems like a very strange thing to do: putting faces together and trading spit." Seems like a very appropriate thing to discuss on Valentine's Day…
  • Anti-Bootlegging Measures and the iPhone App Store – There's a lot of talk about cracked iPhone apps at the moment and the measures that developers are taking. The interesting and surprising thing here is how effective a polite message is, at least in the case of a Mac app.
  • 1234567890 Day – Finally, an event worth celebrating…

My delicious.com bookmarks for January 28th through February 3rd

My delicious.com bookmarks for January 16th through January 19th

  • 6 days to stop MPs concealing their expenses – I'm appalled that they're trying to stop the public finding out how they're spending our money! How about some accountability?
  • Yummy 2.0 Quick Overview – New version of my iPhone delicious.com client. Lots of new features, including a web preview, integration with various Twitter clients, view by tag, improved search, streamlined bookmark editing… the list goes on!
  • If you’ve nothing to hide… – Double standards from MPs. Who'd have thought?

The W Effect

This is probably the meanest article title I’ve ever written, as the “W” refers to a person, someone that I used to work with ((In fact I had a number of choices, and that’s the point. However this, as you’ll see, is an extreme case and is the first I remember.)). The critical phrase went something like this:

“How hard can it be? It’s only a button!”

Those two, tiny sentences hide a lot. Let me explain.

I’m mainly technical. I have been in the industry for over ten years now, did a computer science degree and spent many hours when I should have been revising for my German GCSE programming my Sinclair Spectrum. This means that when someone says “It’s only a button” I instinctively cringe. I may not know the details but I’ve seen enough “simple” buttons with days worth of work behind them that I’ve learned to be cautious.

Of course, not only technical skills are required for most modern applications. Even a relatively small iPhone utility, such as Yummy, needed some time in front of Adobe Illustrator for the icon. Needless to say, that time wasn’t mine.

I am a keen photographer and I have read The Non-Designer’s Design Book but when it comes to art and design I leave the implementation to other people.

Naturally I have opinions. I may, as a “customer,” have constraints. It has to be a particular size or colour, the shape must evoke a certain feeling or imagery. I probably even have a budget. I instinctively like or dislike designs.

But what I don’t profess to know is the design process or how long it should take, and that’s the problem with the “how hard can it be” quote from above.

“W” was from another discipline, couldn’t imagine what might be hard technically and made a commitment to the client based on that hunch. Unfortunately while their part would only take a few hours, it turned out that there were several weeks of technical work to make that button operate.

Of course I don’t want to come down too hard on “W,” as this is both a fairly extreme case and something that we all do to some extent. Things that we don’t understand almost always seem easier than they are in reality. The trick, insofar as there is one, is acknowledge that it does happen and consult with someone who does understand it before making commitments.

My delicious.com bookmarks for December 31st through January 4th

  • Mike Ash on Private APIs – Nice discussion on the pros and cons of using private API's in your applications. The only time I've consciously used them was years ago with a large PL/SQL program on an Oracle database. I got all the upside (quicker development) without any of the down (having to maintain it). Yuk yuk.
  • Electric dreams for pop in 2009 – Apparently synth-pop is making a come-back for 2009. Yay! Less derivative guitar bands and more cheesy pop please!
  • 2008 – The Year in Pictures – Some really beautiful images in here. Wish my photography was up to their standard!