Me Posts

• 01.24.08 FakeSteved! (Me, Humor)

  I used to think it was the Big Time if I got a link from Daring Fireball, but now someone just pointed out to me that the Fake Steve Jobs has taken note of my post.

  So … what does it mean for my post to be criticized by a fictional construct that embodies a parody of the CEO of the very same ex-employer my post criticizes? Especially when, more specifically, that fictional construct’s humor is … MORE

• 01.24.08 3 Weeks (Me)

  I’ve been on my own for three weeks now, and I’m definitely enjoying it. I know that one of the general issues with self-employment is whether one can stay motivated without the external structure imposed by The Man. Fortunately I seem to have no problem with this — I’ve been coding at top speed. Mostly I work in the detached office, which is now clean and cozy, but sometimes I hang out on the couch … MORE

• 01.10.08 Gone Indie (Me)

  Here’s a career update, for those of you who care: I’ve left Apple, and I’m now working on my own, from home, as an indie software developer. I have plans for at least two kick-ass Mac apps, I’ll probably contribute to a few open source projects, and I may dabble in some web stuff.

  (At least, that’s the plan for now! Everything is subject to change without prior notice. This document contains forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ.)

  This is kind of a big change for me. I’ve been continuously employed for 19 years, 16 of those at Apple. I clearly like being part of a team, part of a company, and specifically part of Apple. But there comes a time when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
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• 12.03.07 AppleScript team photo, 1993 (Me, Computers)

  Warren just emailed me this photo, commemorating the release of the first Apple product I worked on. That’s me on the second row, second from the right, with the dopey expression (but no gray hairs.)
  … MORE

• 08.27.07 Holding a Program in One’s Head (Ideas, Me, Computers)

  Paul Graham [who is obnoxiously elitist, but frequently insightful] has a new essay, “Holding a Program in One’s Head“, that is making me feel sad this morning.
  

  “A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he’s working on. Mathematicians don’t answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will.”

  I know that feeling so well, and I want to be back in that [non-Euclidean] space again.

  
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• 01.30.07 Whoopsie! (Me, Humor, Computers)

  

• 10.07.06 Please wave “hello”! (Social Software, Me)

  This is simply a black box into which I type words, and they pop out on a page, and someone might or might not be paying attention. It makes me feel like I’m Helen Keller standing on a soapbox. [….] Therefore, I am asking of you reading this that you please comment on this post. Just a quick “Hi, I read your blog”, like a wave or passing-in-the-hallway smile. Thanks.… MORE

• 10.06.06 Blog 3.0 (beta) (Me)

  Yes, I stopped posting to this blog for a long time.

  Yes, when I noticed it again I found I was tired of its look and its software.

  Yes, I consequently moved it to another engine (actually, back to WordPress) and to another theme, which I heavily customized.

  Yes, there is no guarantee this cycle might not repeat itself again in the future … but in the meantime, hello again!

  (Oh, there’s some good news and bad news … MORE

• 01.07.06 Just Like The Cool Kids (Me, Languages)

  Like most geeks, as a kid I not only despised the Cool Kids, but also wanted to be one of them too. My own school-age development trajectory took me from a state of total ignorance of what that required[1], to brave attempts to fit in[2], to a realization that different was cool[3].

  Anyway: these days being a Cool Kid is within every geek’s reach. Perhaps that’s because the shared culture has exploded into an uncountable number of fragments, each of which is a tribe with its own parallel hierarchies of coolness. Amen to that.
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• 12.02.05 Jens’s Tangled Job History (Me)

  I write code for a living. After all these years I still find it really exciting—I was instantly and permanently addicted at age 11, it’s just that the programs have gone from 20-line BASIC powers-of-two table printers, to enormous Java and Objective-C juggernauts—and moreover I’ve found it’s the one thing that I can work on consistently enough over a long period of time to finish a project of any size. My … MORE