The world is full of commercial software developers who breathe a huge sigh of relief when they ship a new release of their project. They start thinking about vacations. I used to be able to relate to that.

Before starting WGM, I used to be among the purist crowd who considered the ability to [...]

[Read more →]

Paraphrased e-mail:
“You should be ashamed of yourselves for charging for software built on free software!”
Hey Potential Customer Who Feels All Software Should Be Free,
I wanted to write you a quick note about your “free software stack” jab.
Libraries, frameworks, languages and operating systems are the prime candidates for being open-source software.  Hobbyists, professionals and students can [...]

[Read more →]

Remember the Milk is web-based task management app.

It’s been a month since I made Remember The Milk (RTM) part of my daily life. At this point, I’d go through massive withdrawals if I had to “Forget The Milk”.
Tips:

It’s not very obvious that you can edit multiple tasks at the same time by pressing ‘m‘. [...]

[Read more →]

After my post “JIRA Is More Annoying Than Having to Eat Three Times A Day” was published yesterday, Jon Silvers from Atlassian (developers of JIRA) stopped by and left a friendly comment.
I’m incredibly impressed that my tongue-in-cheek critique came to his attention so quickly.
Hey Jon,
First, thanks for commenting! I’m glad you [...]

[Read more →]

Photo by bocavermelha
Up until I snapped a few minutes ago, I wasn’t sure anything could be more annoying than having to eat every day. After all, I’ve been told by close friends that I’d be a happier entity if I was simply a brain in a jar, left entirely to its own thoughts. I don’t [...]

[Read more →]

Photo by Balakov
I’ve been programming for about 16 years now.
I almost called this my “Most Important Programming Lessons”, but I consider writing software to involve far more than a mastery over programming arcana.
When I first discovered source code, I didn’t pick up a manual and start reading about data structures and flow control. That [...]

[Read more →]

Photo by jazzmasterson
If we’re anything alike, you also use a wild tangle of web applications to manage your life or job. We all love web applications — they’re often inexpensive (if not free) and they allow us access our data from almost anywhere. If you have a modern cellphone then you’ve probably also felt the [...]

[Read more →]