Joel Dietz
Jul 27
Jul 23
“ And Esperanto is for noobs ;) If you want to see a real conlang built from the ground up, check out Ilaksh: http://www.ithkuil.net/ilaksh/Ilaksh_Intro.html
“ Matsushima ya / Ah, Matsushima ya / Matsushima ya
Jul 22
“
It is a wonderful and surprising fact that programmers are highly motivated by the desire to create artifacts that are beautiful, useful, or nifty. This desire is not unique to programmers nor universal but it is so strong and common among programmers that it separates them from others in other roles.
This has practical and important consequences. If programmers are asked to do something that is not beautiful, useful, or nifty, they will have low morale. There’s a lot of money to be made doing ugly, stupid, and boring stuff; but in the end, fun will make the most money for the company.
Obviously, there are entire industries organized around motivational techniques some of which apply here. The things that are specific to programming that I can identify are:
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Use the best language for the job.
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Look for opportunities to apply new techniques, languages, and technologies.
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Try to either learn or teach something, however small, in each project.
Finally, if possible, measure the impact of your work in terms of something that will be personally motivating. For example, when fixing bugs, counting the number of bugs that I have fixed is not at all motivational to me, because it is independent of the number that may still exist, and is also affects the total value I’m adding to my company’s customers in only the smallest possible way. Relating each bug to a happy customer, however, is personally motivating to me.
Jul 20
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Jul 19
Jul 14
“ We don’t ask consumers what they want. They don’t know. Instead we apply our brain power to what they need, and will want, and make sure we’re there, ready
— Akio Morita
Jul 11
“ Computer programming is an activity that is also a culture. The unfortunate fact is that it is not a culture that values mental or physical health very much. For both cultural/historical reasons (the need to work at night on unloaded computers, for example) and because of overwhelming time-to-market pressure and the scarcity of programmers, computer programmers are traditionally overworked. I don’t think you can trust all the stories you hear, but I think 60 hours a week is common, and 50 is pretty much a minimum. This means that often much more than that is required. This is serious problem for a good programmer, who is responsible not only for themselves but their teammates as well. You have to recognize when to go home, and sometimes when to suggest that other people go home. There can’t be any fixed rules for solving this problem, anymore than there can be fixed rules for raising a child, for the same reason—-every human being is different.
Giotto | Raising of Lazarus
