Falling Dominos

I was trolling del.icio.us while waiting for the kid to take a nap.

• Top reasons your CSS columns are messed up
• A new spin on the datepicker control <— really cool
• How to Eat Out with Your Toddler Without Defiling Your Family Name

Sweet Ajaxy/Wikipedia’d Periodic Table of Elements.

I think all developers (especially when they are young) have walked into a new programming job (or client) and instantly thought all the existing code is crap and needs to be re-written. We all have our own nuances and style of coding.

Reg Braithwaite wrote a small story about the different types of developers. His story starts with an “agnostic” developer who wrote a small snippet of code that worked. There were a million different ways to write the function, but his worked and it met the requirements. Several other developers imposed their style of code on the function and rewrote the piece several times. When the agnostic developer returned he found that the code was too complicated and now didn’t meet the original requirements.

I think Reginald is trying to point out that we (the developers) are there to provide a useful solution. A solution that can be read and maintained by all developers. It doesn’t mean you can’t do complex stuff (we wouldn’t be using CSS if that was the case). Just make it easy to read and find.

My friend and I have always wanted to build an uber-template. The “template to end all templates” would make creating any type of Lotus Notes application easy for anyone (think superNTF). Each time we thought we created the perfect process, we discovered that the process and terminology was great for us… but it took forever to explain to our colleagues. We typically developed tools and processes that nobody wanted except us. We learned that it wasn’t worth imposing our style on others. They’re getting their job done. Who are we to interfere just because we think our template was better.

Don’t forget to read the comments in Reg’s article. They’re a hoot.

Del.icio.us is now blocked at work. I have no way of saving my links.

Here’s a few good links I found browsing Mike Gunderloy “A Fresh Cup.” (I really miss his old site larkware)

• Widgetfinger - CMS that is designed to automate as much as possible of very small sites.
• LiveHTTPHeaders - Header-monitoring add-in for Firefox. I honestly like ieHTTPHeaders better from a UI point of view - but not enough better to use IE.
• Responds to Parent - This may be another bit required to get multi-file uploads working: a way to send AJAX responses back from an IFRAME to its parent.

There’s a Dark Night trailer here. The movie looks fantastic!

ibelieveinharveydent.com

This made my day…

oDesk is a site where freelancers can bid on jobs. One job on the board is for someone to design an email announcement… inviting people to their events.

There’s a classic line in the job posting:

“We will launch the email announcement from a Gmail account, but it will ultimately reach email boxes powered by a wide array of programs, inlcuding archaic programs like Lotus Notes”

I guess Lotus Notes is archaic… does that make me old too?