I just found out about Alex St. John’s ridiculous article on VentureBeat claiming that developers who object to working uncompensated overtime have “a wage-slave attitude”. Ummm, what? It sounds like he’s trying to use emotional terms and “snarl words” to make people think that “whatever a ‘wage slave attitude’ is, it must be bad!” But look […]
Tag Archives: rants
Let’s Unpack “Professional Victims”
Thursday, January 14th, 2016 – 8:12 am
The only thing more annoying than a phrase that’s overused to the point of cliché is when that overused phrase isn’t even remotely accurate — and in fact, borders on completely nonsensical. The one I’ve heard far too many times in the past year is the all-purpose favorite of Red Pillers, MRAs, GamerGaters, and other defenders […]
Why Do We Care About The Force Awakens?
Wednesday, December 9th, 2015 – 7:53 am
It’s less than two weeks until The Force Awakens hits the theaters. The promotional team has been doing a bang-up job of building advance buzz, with everything from product tie-ins like two flavors of ice cream to getting Pentatonix to do a medley of Star Wars music alongside a 75-piece orchestra at the American Music […]
Fascism Is Anti-American
Friday, November 27th, 2015 – 10:25 am
I can’t believe I have to say any of this stuff. I shouldn’t have to. Nobody should have to say any of this. But I want to be on record. I want the world to know where I stand. When I first started writing this, there were two points I wanted to make. The first was […]
I Feel Like Part of the Problem
Sunday, July 12th, 2015 – 8:00 pm
In San Francisco now, I no longer feel like a useful, contributing member of The City’s social or cultural scene. Merely by virtue of being “a developer”, I feel like I’ve become Part Of the Problem. I sure as hell try not to be. I try to encourage the arts; I try to defend and promote […]
How Do We Stop the Spying?
Friday, September 6th, 2013 – 1:49 pm
I should really write something about the ongoing — and increasingly horrifying — revelations of NSA spying. The latest round of news basically boils down to: The NSA can now say, “I’m in ur crypto readin ur comms — all of them!” Every time I try to write about this, my heart pounds faster and I feel overwhelmed by sorrow, […]
The Place Where Flow Goes to Die
Monday, December 10th, 2012 – 9:58 pm
My employer has multiple offices in different places, so people who I’ve worked “with” for months can still be newcomers to my physical work environment. A visiting co-worker recently said, “From your Twitter feed, I assumed this office would be, like, the loudest place ever.” Am I really that sensitive? I started wondering. I started keeping […]
Are We Always New At Everything?
Saturday, December 17th, 2011 – 4:20 pm
The trend in Microsoft’s products for the past 15 years or more has been toward making things easy for the people who have never used the software before. Of course, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer of those people. The Ribbon is introduced in the Help file thus: And if you’ve used previous versions […]
What Are We Giving Up With E-Text?
Saturday, September 24th, 2011 – 3:19 pm
Engineering is about tradeoffs, and each technology has its advantages and drawbacks. Whenever we leave one technology behind and adopt a new one, we’re sacrificing something. We may be making a terrific trade, getting a hundred times as much cool stuff as give up — but we’re still giving up something, and we should be aware […]
Some Helpful Tips for Recruiters
Sunday, June 26th, 2011 – 1:39 pm
I received a phone call at work this past week, while I was in the middle of debugging some complicated JavaScript. Usually, my desk phone shows the internal extension that’s calling me; this time, it showed a series of asterisks. Intrigued and confused, I picked it up… and discovered it was a recruiter calling me. […]