A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Anyone else who is added into this equation is a waste of money and time.
Ryan Carson on UX designers.
To be honest my hope was that the tags would keep meta-conversation to a minimum. Instead of arguing about whether Bourne Shell programming is really programming, the Obsessive Taxonimists (alt.taxonomy.obsessive.judean.people’s-front.popular) could just tag the question “bourne-shell” and leave the rest of us to ask and answer questions happily.
Interesting social implications of taxonomies. Apparently, tags ARE the answer. Another example that comes to my mind: Amazon.
Recently, Eric Schmidt, of Google, remarked that “There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003.” He continued, “Now that much information is created every 2 days.
Scarried by information devaluation a blogger moves to a closed and paid publishing system. While it's hard to disagree with his rationale, I don't think impatient web audience cares enough to follow him there. More likely will just go elsewhere.
One recent Googler, we’ve confirmed, was recently offered a counter offer he couldn’t refuse (except he did). He was offered a 15% raise on his $150,000 mid level developer salary, quadruple the stock benefits and…wait for it…a $500,000 cash bonus to stay for a year. He took the Facebook offer anyway.
So, now Facebook is officially the hottest tech company to work for. Who's next?
Instead I’m going to tell it like it is. And what it is is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them.
Arrington touches the (overly) sensitive subject of gender in tech community. Good read.
Over the past two weeks, I wandered Toronto’s downtown core with five prepaid Visa and MasterCard gift cards, in $50 and $75 denominations, waiting for people to ask for money.
Sad, but interesting story.
As for the argument that programming languages are too cryptic, this is just a misunderstanding of what people really want. What people really want, is magic.
An issue well explained by Frederick Brooks in his famous Mythical Man Month book: difficulty of software development comes from analyzing and modeling the problem. Translating it into a programming language is an easy part.
The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers. And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are.
While the data quoted in the article comes from electric engineering, I expect that in programming the reality is even harsher.
The majority of IE6 users come from the corporate world, and as we've discussed before, one of the reasons that world keeps IE6 around is exactly because it doesn't work well with social networking sites like Facebook.
I have never thought about this reason to keep IE6, but in fact it makes perfect sense.
There are a few side affects to this surge of realism. I think that there is an Uncanny Valley in interface design that some Websites and applications have landed themselves in through approaching interface design in the wrong way. The Uncanny Valley of interface design might not cause something disturbing, but the user experience can be compromised.
Inconclusive post about the realism in user interface design.
