Stack Overflow Podcast episode 30 is up, with special guest Richard White of UserVoice.
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Stack Overflow Podcast episode 30 is up, with special guest Richard White of UserVoice.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
Let's stop advertising America as a place to send "your poor your tired your huddled masses" to be assimilated and end up resembling some shade of Bruce Willis. Instead let's talk about our diversity portfolio. Let's bill ourselves as Diversity World, and get us some diversity action on the world market. Why should Belgians have all the money?
Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme: the reader has no idea how representative such examples are, or how reliable — or dated — any particular study might be.”
This review captures what's been driving me crazy over the last year... an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works. Whether it's Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur, or Malcolm Gladwell with his weak theories on tipping points, crazy incorrect theories on first impressions, or utterly lunatic theories on experts, it all becomes insanely popular simply because the stories are fun and interesting and everybody wants to hear a good story. Spare me.
Friedman and Gladwell's outsized, flat-world success has lead to a huge number of wannabes. I was really looking forward to reading Simplexity, because it sounded like an interesting topic, until I settled down with it tonight and discovered that it was chock-full of all those amusing bedtime stories about the map of the cholera plague in London in 1854, which I've heard a million times, and then suddenly I noticed (shock!) that not only was the author a journalist, not a scientist, but he was actually an editor at Time Magazine, which has an editorial method in which editors write stories based on notes submitted by reporters (the reporters don't write their own stories), so it's practically designed to get everything wrong, to insure that, no matter how ignorant the reporters are on an issue, they'll find someone who knows even less to write the actual story. Panicking, I began to flip through the book at random. There's that story about Don Norman and complicated user interfaces. Here he is reading Nassim Taleb. I've heard all these anecdotes! Stop, already! I threw the book away in frustration.
This is the third one of the day. My business partner Jeff Atwood was busy extracting himself from the flamewars he started by writing an article on, of all things, NP-completeness, which is, actually, something that it's possible to know something about, because it's not a vague sociological hypotheticoncept like simplexiflatness or blinkoutliers, it's actually a real, important result from Computer Science, with a rigorous definition and lots of published papers, and poor Jeff got himself in something of a pickle by writing a book review when he hadn't read the book, and fortunately, he has comments on his blog, so his readers called him out on it.
Now, I am not one to throw stones. Heck, I practically invented the formula of "tell a funny story and then get all serious and show how this is amusing anecdote just goes to show that (one thing|the other) is a universal truth." And everybody is like, oh yes! how true! and they link to it with approval, and it zooms to the top of Slashdot. And six years later, a new king arises who did not know Joel, and he writes up another amusing anecdote, really, it's the same anecdote, and he uses it to prove the exact opposite, and everyone is like, oh yes! how true! and it zooms to the top of Reddit.
This is not the way to move science forward. On Sunday Dave Winer [partially] defined "great blogging" as "people talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course)." Can we get some more of that, please? Thanks.
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In this week's Stack Overflow podcast, Jeff and I talk about video games, programming languages that aren't "in" English, and hiring great programmers.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
The incoming president is shopping for a dog for his two daughters. After the election was all over, the tears of joy were wiped away, and the spilled champagne mopped up, the media looked around for new news, and came up with this. It's so great not to be forced to write about torture, war, and economic disaster, for a change. Let's talk about hypoallergenic dogs!
Here's what I'm thinking. Obama is just not funny enough by himself. I need me some funny stuff in the White House. He got me Joe Biden, and I thank him for that, but even Joe Biden isn't all that funny. He's no Sarah Palin. But a hairless live ferret morsel passing for a dog you can carry around in a coffee mug, that's a hoot.
In reality, this is America, not the United Arab Emirates. In America, there is no such thing as a hypo-homeless city. The closest thing to a hypo-homeless city in the world is Dubai, which passes its wealth out among its citizens, so that not one is poor by any standard. That will not happen here, even with the socialist in the White House.
Corey reviews the podcasts Jeff and I are doing, under the title Jeff Atwood is Trying to Kill Me: “The trip from Chicago to Detroit was without homicidal incident. The only harbinger of what was to come was that I could sense a growing irritation in myself towards Jeff Atwood. Why? Because Jeff just couldn't keep up with the pace of Joel's conversational tennis.”
Ha! Take that, Jeff “Atwood,” if that's even your real name, you homicidal maniac!
Anyway, sorry I haven't been posting as much here on the blog. As Corey discovered, the action is all on the podcast. This week, Jeff and I go through the colors. Azure and Orange feature prominently.
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Wow! Wasn't that election a surprise? Who could have guessed Truman would win?
On the other hand I was sure Hubert Humphrey would beat Nixon in '68. It was the last significant cash bet I ever made in my life. I still owe some guy $20. I figure he'll never collect, since he probably died in a rice paddy, possibly the same year.
In fact the Federal reserve cut that interest rate without knowing what effect it could have. It seemed like a good idea, because it's helped ease us out of recessions in the past. But we're in a credit crunch. How do you encourage credit by making it worth less to the creditor? I don't know! And neither does your government! They're flying blind!
1. Try to predict something really important, like global warming. Now, before doing anything else, try to predict the opposite of what you predicted the first time. Next, try to predict which of your predictions is better. Show your work, in detail, with footnotes and bibliography. Nothing got better, did it? Welcome to Science!
“As for what this all means, I'm still trying to figure that out. I abandoned seven long-held principles about business and software engineering, and nothing terrible happened.”
From my latest Inc. column: The Unproven Path
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Our guests on this week's Stack Overflow Podcast are the founders of Reddit, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
By the way, Jeff recently upgraded the database server from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to 2008, and found pretty conclusively that 2008 has a new architecture for full text search which is significantly slower than it was in 2005. Something to be careful about if you're thinking of upgrading to 2008.
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Actually, that's a little misleading. I'm really building a virtual fiefdom as "Knight Wes" and I'm trying to man and woman my fiefdom with vassals so I may better raid and pillage other less prepared fiefdoms and become a Baron, then Count, then King, and eventually Emperor of The Known World. Inviting friends to the certain internet social network is just part of my evil plan of ultimate conquest.
For a long time, I thought the problem was I just wasn't trying hard enough to make friends with rich people. I needed to get out more and travel among the stinking rich. So I went to art openings and concerts and loitered in airports next to guys in suits and Italian shoes, with good teeth, checked luggage, cuff links, and briefcases. I brought offerings of Grey Poupon. I carried conspicuous copies of the Wall Street Journal. Eventually, I had to accept that the real problem was the stinking rich weren't trying hard enough to make friends with me. In fact, they weren't trying at all.
I'm sure Bill Gates has no need of a parachute -- he can do a power landing in any economic crisis -- but I'm not so positive that the rest of his gang hasn't overused their credit lines buying toys.
A 1963 Supreme Court case decided that a Ms. Sherbert who was fired for not working on her Sabbath day was entitled to unemployment benefits, establishing the 4 part "Sherbert Test" to help courts determine when religious freedom trumps a law: If 1) a belief is sincere and if 2) the law places a significant burden on the practice of the belief, then the government must prove 3) it's acting in furtherance of a "compelling state interest," and 4) it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion. If 1) and 2) hold and 3) and 4) can't be proved by the government, then the government needs to step off.
It so happens it's against MY religion to give one dime of my taxes to any organization that only hires Christians to do charity work that Animists could do just as well. But the Justice Department decided that my religious claim on how MY money is spent in MY name doesn't mean SQUAT, because these religious charities that can collect all the money they want from public donations TAX-FREE would be SERIOUSLY burdened by not having my money, too.
3) Does the state, i.e. the city, have a compelling interest? They have an interest in ensuring that people can park on the streets. But compelling? Parking? Compared to survival? Give me a break.
On this week's Stack Overflow Podcast, Jeff and I devote the episode to questions from listeners.
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[Above: Without one of these, how are people supposed to get there?]
What did I just tell you in the first paragraph? This is Seattle's chance to create a whole new thriving industry! We've been Jet City. We've been Amazon Central. We've been Latteville. Now we can be Jail Town, USA!
Let's get Rem Koolhaus to design it. Let's build a world-class park around it, and charge for tours. Let's build a new college to train incarceration professionals and to teach politicians how to write laws that can't fail to be broken.
“A couple of years ago, I went into a big-box shoe store and bought a pair of sneakers. At the checkout counter, the cashier grabbed a can of that bogus silicone spray stores always try to up-sell you. It's supposed to make sneakers shiny and waterproof, but it doesn't seem to do anything.”
From my latest Inc. column: Sins of Commissions
My dad emailed to add:
The same problem arises when you set measurable incentives (money for better test results) in educational policies like No Child Left Behind.
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This week's Stack Overflow Podcast features special guest star and programming blogger superhero Steve Yegge. It's a terrific conversation about working at Google, marketing your ideas, and programming languages... one of the most interesting podcasts yet.
In the spirit of Steve's extremely long blog posts, we ran about 15 minutes long this week.

In the past, Jeff and I have had some audio problems using Skype to record the podcast--mainly, dropouts when we talk over each other. I set up a bunch of new gear which seems to have finally fixed this problem. Here's a description of the new podcasting setup.
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On August 17th, Jason, a student in our software management training program, read a post by Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire:
"Here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire (I have no direct experience in this area, but I'm told that hair flammability is quite urgent).
"Do nothing except finish the project. Hey, you could have been on vacation, so it's okay to neglect everything else, to put your email on vacation autorespond and your phone on voice mail and to beg off on the sleepy weekly all-hands meeting and to avoid the interactions with those that might say no...
"And then finish it. Finish the website or the manuscript or business plan or the suite of tools."
At the time, the Copilot team had spent a couple of months stuck in a bizarre Moby Dick-style obsessive hunt to fix a very obscure bug in a very rare edge case in some code which nobody would ever see. There was a loooong period of time there where every once in a while I would ask Ben what was going on and he would say, "we should have AutoUpdate done today." I didn't know what AutoUpdate was, but the eleventh time I heard that it was going to be done "today" I started to detect a pattern.
When Jason read Seth's motivational post, probably after drinking a little bit ttoooo mmuucchh ccooffffee, he got really excited by this idea, and quickly sold Ben and Tyler, the developers, that they should try something. In their weakened state from an exhausting chase after one very annoying bug, they probably could have been convinced that it was a good idea to try hang gliding from the roof of our office building to the Statue of Liberty, so they went along with it.
To keep focused, Jason instituted daily scrum-like standup meetings. It took about three weeks to get to code complete and about three more weeks of testing and polishing, but lo and behold, it's here: Copilot OneClick!
Copilot was originally optimized to be the easiest way to provide temporary, ad-hoc tech support over the internet. It's a remote desktop system that's focused on ease of use, with nothing to install, so it's perfect for tech support departments that just need to get onto a customer's system remotely to fix problems, without asking the customer to install software, change firewall settings, etc. etc.
OneClick is a new feature that allows you to install Copilot on the computers you connect to most frequently, and makes re-connecting to those computers a breeze. It's a huge step forward in usability.
So, thanks, Seth Godin, for the motivation. Now if I could just get the contractor working on our office to read Seth's blog...
PS. Since the summer, we've added a lot of other small features, which I haven't reported here. There's a new monthly $19.95 flat rate plan. Weekends are now totally free (ideal for helping your family and friends). There's also a free 15 day trial. The best way to keep up with these things is to subscribe to the Copilot Blog.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
On August 17th, Jason, a student in our software management training program, read a post by Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire:
"Here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire (I have no direct experience in this area, but I'm told that hair flammability is quite urgent).
"Do nothing except finish the project. Hey, you could have been on vacation, so it's okay to neglect everything else, to put your email on vacation autorespond and your phone on voice mail and to beg off on the sleepy weekly all-hands meeting and to avoid the interactions with those that might say no...
"And then finish it. Finish the website or the manuscript or business plan or the suite of tools."
At the time, the Copilot team had spent a couple of months stuck in a bizarre Moby Dick-style obsessive hunt to fix a very obscure bug in a very rare edge case in some code which nobody would ever see. There was a loooong period of time there where every once in a while I would ask Ben what was going on and he would say, "we should have AutoUpdate done today." I didn't know what AutoUpdate was, but the eleventh time I heard that it was going to be done "today" I started to detect a pattern.
When Jason read Seth's motivational post, probably after drinking a little bit ttoooo mmuucchh ccooffffee, he got really excited by this idea, and quickly sold Ben and Tyler, the developers, that they should try something. In their weakened state from an exhausting chase after one very annoying bug, they probably could have been convinced that it was a good idea to try hang gliding from the roof of our office building to the Statue of Liberty, so they went along with it.
To keep focused, Jason instituted daily scrum-like standup meetings. It took about three weeks to get to code complete and about three more weeks of testing and polishing, but lo and behold, it's here: Copilot OneClick!
Copilot was originally optimized to be the easiest way to provide temporary, ad-hoc tech support over the internet. It's a remote desktop system that's focused on ease of use, with nothing to install, so it's perfect for tech support departments that just need to get onto a customer's system remotely to fix problems, without asking the customer to install software, change firewall settings, etc. etc.
OneClick is a new feature that allows you to install Copilot on the computers you connect to most frequently, and makes re-connecting to those computers a breeze. It's a huge step forward in usability.
So, thanks, Seth Godin, for the motivation. Now if I could just get the contractor working on our office to read Seth's blog...
PS. Since the summer, we've added a lot of other small features, which I haven't reported here. There's a new monthly $19.95 flat rate plan. Weekends are now totally free (ideal for helping your family and friends). There's also a free 15 day trial. The best way to keep up with these things is to subscribe to the Copilot Blog.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.
[Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]
The whole Stack Overflow team got together in person at Fog Creek's shiny new office in New York City for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com, which is up as this week's podcast.
Shanah Tovah u-Metuka!
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
The whole Stack Overflow team got together in person at Fog Creek's shiny new office in New York City for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com, which is up as this week's podcast.
Shanah Tovah u-Metuka!
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Not all of us have such fear. Saturday I opened up the Seattle P-I to find none other than my beloved Anitra "Smiling Buddha" Freeman gazing blissfully up at a policeman about to haul her radical-hippy ass off to jail. The possibility that this time they could just leave her there and forget to tell anyone either did not occur to her, or it goosed her, or she'd gone batspit crazy and thought the policeman was Wilford Brimley come to take her to Antarea, where she'd be young forever, and learn break-dancing from Don Ameche.
Before Anitra got arrested there was a scene, broadcast on KING TV, of her telling residents of Nickelsville ("Nickelodeons") three options the police had laid out. I've watched the video over and over, trying to figure out the logic of the three options. It sounds like what she said the police were saying was the Nickelodeons' options were EITHER 1) stay and be arrested OR 2) go away and not be arrested, OR 3) go away with shipoopy, and no kiss.
It all worked out half well though. I did not get arrested. Anitra got caught and released. Governor Gregoire granted a reprieve to Nickelsville itself, letting the Nickelodeons cram as many tents onto a state owned parking lot as could fit, out of reach of the mayor. I got to talk to the people the mayor sent from Human Services to refer Nickelodeons to "proper" shelter in the system, and I tried to find out how they could do that with a straight face knowing that the shelters are full every night. Answer: they don't think about that. They just pass out referral cards to whoever takes them and call it a job done.
Well, you know, for the sake of MY wealth and all, I'd just as soon we keep the seven hundred billion dollars, if you don't mind, bitte, danke schön! Auf wiedersehen, vaya con Dios, amigo! Thank you very frappen much!
George's plan asks for the same deal he asked from Congress re Iraq. He wants his Secretary of the Treasury to be authorized to do anything at all with the 700 billion. No limits. The future is uncertain. There are terrorists among us. This is a post-9-11 world. Constitutional checks and balances are outmoded in this climate of fear and terror. Saddam Hussein must be defeated at all costs. We only ask authorization to do what is necessary in these dangerous times.
Why doesn't somebody make this?
This would make it easy to plug in laptops, USB peripherals, and all your rechargers at your desk without crawling around on the floor.
(The photograph shows a product by Mockett which comes tantalizingly close, but which has knockouts for you to hardwire your own ports instead of built-in LAN and usb hubs.)
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In Episode #22 of the Stack Overflow podcast, Jeff and I talk to guest Josh Millard of MetaFilter about moderating community sites.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
I have a column due by 9 AM this morning, and I've also promised Anitra "Not Acting On Behalf Of Anybody In Particular" Freeman that by the same time I'd read a book-length manifesto on Nickelsville that she wrote with a committee. Not being inclined to do needless work, I shall now attempt to combine the two efforts into one glorious slack-off.
Today, we don't just think Greg Nickels has a lot to do with how hard it is to survive homeless in Seattle, we know he does. We have listened to him talk a good talk about ending homelessness, while at the same time chasing homeless encampments all around the city and destroying survival gear wherever found. The message from Nickels is, we, the City of Seattle, will end homelessness in the abstract by 2014 (only: not really because the plan isn't to actually end homeless, but hah, hah, that's what we say about it, even though the plan itself says something entirely different, read the fine print), but concretely we will strip all the homeless that are forced outdoors for lack of adequate shelter of all their property, and leave them to the elements.
Nickelsville should make matters clearer. "What are homeless people doing to help themselves?" Nickelsville, for one thing.