Blockr →
Blockr is a new Chrome extension that blocks you from the internet until you’ve reached some writing or coding goal. A bit draconian perhaps, but for easily distracted workers, this may be worth investing time into.
Blockr is a new Chrome extension that blocks you from the internet until you’ve reached some writing or coding goal. A bit draconian perhaps, but for easily distracted workers, this may be worth investing time into.
Nice open debate thread over on Stack Exchange regarding developer attitude and work ethic in the office. A lot of interesting and helpful replies here.
Clever tutorial site focused on quick keyboard drills in the most popular text editors. They’ve got everything from Vim to Sublime Text 2 covered. Alas, it’s most of the site requires payment, but the initial free Sublime tutorial was so slick and simple I can see myself diving in for a membership at some point.
Developer Nicholas Zakas:
I have a theory. That theory is that software engineers see themselves very differently than those with whom they work. I’ve come to this conclusion after over a decade in the software industry working at companies large and small. Companies (product managers, designers, other managers) tend to look at software engineers as builders. It’s the job of the product manager to dream up what to build, the job of the designer to make it aesthetically pleasing, and the job of the engineer to build what they came up with. Basically, engineers are looked at as the short-order cooks of the industry.
Great article. As Nick goes on to argue, good developers are much more than “builders”. We’re creative minds and demand to be treated as such.
CEO Dave Lee on productivity system Getting Things Done (GTD):
Though I still appreciate some of GTD’s principles (next action, desired outcome as project, brain dumping, etc), I think the system can actually work against the creative innovator. It boggles down the innovator with a flood of tasks, when the innovator needs space and room for experimentation and discovery.
Dave’s argument has grown on me recently. I’ve been a hard core Omnifocus GTD user for over a year, but at some point I started to lose it in terms of all the options, settings, and perspectives Omnifocus offered. It just felt like overkill. So several weeks ago I just deleted Omnifocus everywhere and shifted my workflow to a bunch of flat lists. I now use TaskAgent, Cheddar and Due to handle my productivity workflow. So far, so good.
Designer Dan Cederholm interviewed by The Great Discontent:
Maybe it goes back to not being formally trained, but I always had this inferiority complex. I thought I was going to be outed as a non-designer and that someone would say, “Wait, he’s not really a designer. He’s not part of this club.” That isn’t true. The difference between someone who is a designer and someone who isn’t is simply that a person who is a designer has done it. My advice is don’t get hung up on labels or position or titles. It doesn’t just happen; it’s a gradual process. You can’t be afraid to jump in there and start doing it.
Dan’s a cool designer, one who’s been a huge source of CSS inspiration for me with his Bulletproof Web Design and CSS3 for Web Designers books. Naturally it’s a great interview, but it was this paragraph that really struck a chord with me. I’ve always pushed my career forward by looking for the next big thing and not being so hung up on my specific role. I’m not alone either; designers and developers are moving to smaller, multidisciplinary teams where being game for wearing multiple hats becomes critical.
I haven’t bought into integrating a standing desk routine into my workflow yet. That attitude may change with this extended article at Brain Lam’s The Wirecutter. Breaking from its usual review heavy content, author Mark Lukach spends the first half of the article diving into standing desk health benefits and general best practices.
Startup entrepreneur Ilya Lichtenstein on the effects of him picking up basic programming skills:
The lessons I’ve learned from actually building and launching products are invaluable.
I never ask for specific estimates or set hard deadlines for finishing a project. I know firsthand that the last 10% of a project can take 90% of the time.
I don’t say things like “This looks really easy to do, you can throw it together in a couple hours, right?” The most complex projects can look deceptively simple.
Exactly. I’ve worked directly with and for a business almost a decade now. Once you have as little as one or two decision makers on the business side with a technical background, it can have a huge positive effect on relations with the tech team.
An inspiration for Mondays.
Web developer/designer Jonathan Christopher:
We can’t help but to be influenced by headlines like Instagram getting bought for $1B. As ridiculous as that is, as much of an outlying circumstance it is, we can’t help but to want something like that to happen to us. Seeing something that ridiculous happen almost makes it seem like “small” dreams of one day getting a $1M payout that much more realistic, almost deserved in some way.
Ultimately it seems to me that big payouts have become the definition of success in our industry, and to be blunt I think that sucks.