Oh, come on

"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s..."

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:09:28 +0200

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

- James Cameron

Мухи как люди

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:40:54 +0200

Мухи как люди

If you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:06:06 +0200

If you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users.

— Joel Spolsky

Джоел, как насчет We help people be awesome.

"There’s a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and..."

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:37:54 +0200

“

There’s a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it’s none of those. It’s taste.

When I first started designing as a hobby, I hated everything I made. I knew it was terrible, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never make it good enough for myself. But I didn’t give up, and after a while something clicked. I started to sort of like my work. But I am still not satisfied; every day I reach higher, trying to grasp the level of awesomeness that I can feel but can’t recreate.

I didn’t realize this was happening until I saw a video of Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, explaining the phenomenon as it relates to writing and production. He points out how that gap between ability and taste drives creative people to achieve great things.

”

- Dustin Curtis

Мультик про Поньо напоминает о самых ярких впечатлениях, которые были очень давно. Сережки в ушах...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:24:56 +0200

Мультик про Поньо напоминает о самых ярких впечатлениях, которые были очень давно. Сережки в ушах мамы Поньо, похожие на барбарис, маленький подводный мир, катание на лодке в зарослях. Бушующее море, похожее по размаху на ночное небо Ван Гога.

Когда я был маленький и пугался, я запрыгивал на диван и прижимался к нему. Я знал что монстры меня...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:16:00 +0200

Когда я был маленький и пугался, я запрыгивал на диван и прижимался к нему. Я знал что монстры меня там не тронут и успокаивался. Вчера смотрел фильм Сияние и понял откуда это. То же самое происходит с животными, они стараются слиться с окружением и затаивают дыхание, чтобы хищник их не заметил. Приятно чувствовать это родство, понимать что ты не выплюнут в этот мир непонятно откуда, что ты часть мира.

"Over-engineering is poison. It’s not like doing extra work for extra credit. It’s more..."

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:14:36 +0200

“Over-engineering is poison. It’s not like doing extra work for extra credit. It’s more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don’t contradict it.”

- Paul Graham

"[…] But none of this answers the original question: why do we have an element? Why..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:05:00 +0200

“[…] But none of this answers the original question: why do we have an element? Why not an element? Or an element? Why not a hyperlink with an include attribute, or some combination of rel values? Why an element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins.”

- Mark Pilgrim

"It appears to be a permanent part of the human condition that long term deadlines without short term..."

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:12:05 +0200

“It appears to be a permanent part of the human condition that long term deadlines without short term milestones are rarely met.”

- Joel Spolsky

"So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more..."

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:29:57 +0300

“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”

- Caterina, on working hard via 37 signals

"Seibel: Is there a key skill programmers must have? Zawinski: Well, curiosity—taking things apart...."

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:12:16 +0300

“

Seibel: Is there a key skill programmers must have?

Zawinski: Well, curiosity—taking things apart. Wanting to know what’s going on under the hood. I think that’s really the basis of it. Without that I don’t think you get very far. That’s your primary way of acquiring knowledge. Taking something apart and looking at it is how you learn to build your own. At least for me. I’ve read very few books about computers. My experience has been digging through source code or reference manuals. I’ve got a goal and, alright, to do this I need to know what this thing does and what this thing does. And I’ll just sort of random-walk through that until I find where I’m going.

”

- Coders at Work

"When I’m just writing the first version of the program, I tend to put everything in one file. And..."

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:50:00 +0300

“

When I’m just writing the first version of the program, I tend to put everything in one file. And then I start seeing structure in that file. Like there’s this block of things that are pretty similar. That’s a thousand lines now, so why don’t I move that into another file. And the API sort of builds up organically that way. The design process is definitely an ongoing thing; you never know what the design is until the program is done. So I prefer to get my feet wet as early as possible; get something on the screen so I can look at it sideways […]

Sometimes I start at the top and sometimes I start at the bottom. It depends. One way is, I know I’m going to need these building blocks and I’ll put those together first. Or another way of thinking about it is, you’ve sort of got an outline of it in your head and you dig down. I do it both ways.

”

- Jamie Zawinski, from the book Coders at Work

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:35:11 +0300

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them:

Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen.

"Now don’t forget: all diagrams are destined for the garbage. The meaningful work is work that..."

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:16:19 +0300

“Now don’t forget: all diagrams are destined for the garbage. The meaningful work is work that directly affects our customers as screens they can see or code that functions.”

- Ryan Singer

"Good ideas turn into good designs fairly quickly. If you catch yourself fiddling too much with..."

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:08:16 +0300

“Good ideas turn into good designs fairly quickly. If you catch yourself fiddling too much with colors, borders and treatments to bring a design together, chances are the problem lies somewhere deeper.”

- Ryan Singer

Persuade xor Discover

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:54:00 +0300

Persuade xor Discover:

You don’t know what the ideas are until you get them down to the fewest words. […] The ideas start to get mixed together with the spin you’ve added to get them past the readers’ misconceptions […] I worry that if I wrote to persuade, I’d start to shy away unconsciously from ideas I knew would be hard to sell.

"Никогда не доверяйте человеку, который пишет слово «имхо». Какое тупое излишнее подтверждение..."

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:56:48 +0300

“Никогда не доверяйте человеку, который пишет слово «имхо». Какое тупое излишнее подтверждение собственного мнения и собственной важности. Есть мнение — говори, ставь точку в конце предложения и наслаждайся своим «мнением» молча.”

- Таня Черкиз

На случай если ещё кто-то вякнет про венгерскую нотацию. Hungarian notation is a crutch used by...

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:26:05 +0300

На случай если ещё кто-то вякнет про венгерскую нотацию.

Hungarian notation is a crutch used by people who want to avoid developing their skill for creating meaningful variable names. And like any bad habit, it’s very hard to break. Like smoking or heroin. It ruined a generation of programmers.

Made You Look называется. Дизайн должен цеплять? Этот цепляет до тошноты. Голые яйца не шокируют,...

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:22:07 +0300

Made You Look называется. Дизайн должен цеплять? Этот цепляет до тошноты. Голые яйца не шокируют, это не скандал, это просто волосатые яйца. Цепляющие оптические эффекты, цепляющие абсурдные контрасты, всё по одной схеме, ни одной работы с душой.

I remember looking at some design annuals when I was 18 not thinking much of them. I thought that that stuff can only be interesting for designers, for the general public it’s simply not exciting enough. Everything would have to be at least a couple of notches better to have actual impact. […] The next step should be to design something that really captures the imagination of general public. I am in an ideal situation with my small studio - I should be able to take advantage of it.

Things to do before I die.
+ Open and run a design studio in New York
+ Have sex with 2 women
+ Keep close contact with Mom in Austria
+ Find a GREAT girlfriend
- Work a year or two without clients, design experiments only
- Drive a truck through Siberia
- Move to Sri-Lanka
- Touch SOMEBODY’S HEART with graphic design.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:47:14 +0300

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity