Hands and Feet

December 1, 2012

When I was a teenager I worked at a large amusement park in the games department, which I guess technically means I was a carnie. One of the more interesting games I worked at was the rope ladder; in order to win the game contestants had to climb up a rope ladder set at a 45 degree angle and attached to swivel points at the bottom. Unsurprisingly I learned to climb it easily (free tries and boredom does wonders for learning), but I witnessed very few winners.…more

Reaction to Kill Your Heroes and Comments

November 29, 2012

Will Larsen had a nice post about what he calls Hero Programmers. Put simply, his theory is that some projects end up in a state where they count on massive effort by a select few heroes on the team. The problem is that this upsets those who aren’t heroes, burns out the heroes, and still won’t save an ailing project. What was particularly interesting to me was some of the responses on Reddit.…more

The Myth of the Lone Hacker

November 22, 2012

Most programmers start off their career relatively idealistic, and often marvel at the power of little used programming languages. For me, this language was Common Lisp, which I got to work with professionally. At first I believed that Lisp still had the power to revolutionize programming, but after a few years of work I realized exactly why Lisp ended up in the position it is now: community. Every programming community has a few core beliefs, both explicit and implicit, that shape the language, the libraries, and its users.…more