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Archived

These are posts ported from my old blog that used to be at this URL and which was active from about 2005–2015.

How to actually ship software that actually works

Do you think you have what it takes to ship great software? I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not easy and takes a lot of effort—but it’s all skills that you can learn. Here’s my checklist for getting software projects done, in a

What do you need to make a successful web app?

Here’s some things you need to make a successful web app: * A plan to make an application that helps real people to make their lives easier, solving a well-researched problem * Understand human psychology * Know how to design, both in terms of UX flow and visual design * A marketing

Why frameworks don’t have much to do with how easy it is to add a feature

You’re using the hottest and hippest new framework? You generate Node-powered Erlang templates in a crowdsourced Haskell cluster? You run JavaScript on a Ruby VM that uses a Lisp DSL? You stream events to your MVVC like there’s no tomorrow? Whatever you do, in a real business,

Client-side MVC is not a silver bullet

This is an edited repost of a comment of mine on Amy’s blog post about why we shut down Charm. Charm, as it is, is using Backbone.js, Underscore.js and Zepto on the front-end, and Rails 2.3, Postgres, memcached, redis, resque, and for websockets Sinatra, and

5 rules to sell thousands of copies of your ebook

Wondering what your “hourly rate” is when you go out and write a technical book? Traditionally, publishers will tell you that you do it for “exposure” but we all know that you can die from that. Seriously, even for the publisher it’s a big gamble, and with all the

Flowchart: how to retinafy your website

⌛This post is preserved because it is of historical interest With Retina screens all around us, it’s time to take the plunge and retinafy your website or webapp. Here’s the process I use (for both mobile and desktop) in the form of a flowchart for some more sanity

European vs American cooking habits and why it matters for programming

Once upon a time I lived a quietish life in Vienna, Austria. I cooked a lot for friends and myself. I really enjoyed it and more importantly I just knew that I’ve learned everything there is about making meals from my friends and family and from what you “just

Zepto.js, a minimalist JavaScript framework for mobile WebKit browsers

⌛This post is preserved because it is of historical interest Mobile WebKit based browsers (like those on the iPhone/iPad, Android and Palm webOS) provide really powerful DOM, JavaScript and CSS features. So why not use them in a framework, that’s specifically crafted for these modern mobile devices? The

script.aculo.us launched!

⌛This post is preserved because it is of historical interest The Web is changing. The 30-year-old terminal-like technology it was originally is gradually giving way to new ways of doing things. Web apps don’t have to stay behind the current graphical trends in ultra-rich-desktop-