My coffee cup and I first met in San Diego around 2003. The company I worked for had an incentive program. If you performed above and beyond the call of duty, they rewarded you with “company currency”, which could be used to purchase special items. We’d recently experienced explosive growth and were dealing with big growing pains. Fresh out of college, I was eager to prove me skills. I dealt with furious customers and software that wasn’t designed to handle their needs. It was awesome.

Eventually I traded in the “company bucks” I’d acquired for a big ticket item:  a corporate-branded coffee cup. I’ve kept my trophy mug with me all this time, maybe as a reminder. When something bad happened at my current gig I’d look at my cup and reminisce. “Remember that time I stayed up for 30 hours fixing that crazy bug?” I’d say to myself and think: "this task is easy in comparison!". I often wonder if the software I wrote back then is still being used and performing well.

My cup was a reminder of battles fought… and won. It reminded me that people appreciate it when you go out of your way to fix something for them. It also reminded me of how much I’ve learned, and how much I have yet to learn. It will be missed.

*** BREAKING UPDATE  -- 7/13/11 ***

I found my coffe cup! I accidentally ventured over to the IT department and it there was, sitting next to a pile of tech stuff. However, our reunion was bittersweet. You see, I've been using a new mug (shown below on the left) these last few weeks. It was a gift to commemerate grad school graduation, and to be honest, I've moved on. The old cup (shown below on the right) will still maintain a respectable position in the cupboard back at home. I'm so happy to have it back :)

new cup, old cup

The Problem

There are many, many ways to find great things to read on the web. People are always linking to interesting articles on Twitter. Some sites, like Hacker News, aggregate the most interesting articles of the day on a certain topic. Everywhere you look there's intriguing content on the web, and the most interesting stuff is more than two paragraphs long.

However, the moment when you find a great new article isn't always the best time to read it. If you're checking Twitter in line at the grocery store, you probably don't have time to finish that four-page New York Times article. Or, if you're taking a quick five-minute break from work, you may not have time to power through the interesting-but-distracting article your friend emailed you about raising urban chickens. Eventually you could end up having 20 tabs of unfinished articles in your browser, all of which you think you'll read eventually, but will only end up confusing you.

The Solution - "Read It Later"

Instapaper is a simple tool that lets you mark interesting webpages, then come back and read them later on the device of your choice. You set it up by dragging the Instapaper's "Read Later" bookmarklet up to you bookmark toolbar.

When you're hunting around for great articles, just click "Read Later" and it's saved. Then, when it's convenient, you can return to the Instapaper website (or iPhone/iPad app ) and browse through your treasure trove of brain-enhancing blog posts. I end up getting a lot of Instapaper reading in at the end of the day in bed. TMI?

Here's what Instapaper looks like in action:

Instapaper Website

Instapaper iPhone App

Do you use Instapaper? Maybe some other great productivity-enhancing tool?

As I have previously mentioned, I’ve become a podcast addict.  To me, listening to a podcast is equivalent to attending an expert panel discussion at an industry conference, except the conference is in my car.  I’m sure you could find four or five awesome podcasts dedicated to any interest you have (e.g. Home Brewing, Accounting, or Buddhism).  Like any addict, I need my fix daily.  This is where I run into problems.  Experts spend their valuable free time producing these podcasts and often release them weekly, but sometimes skip a week, or multiple weeks.   So, my morning ritual is to ask: “Dude, I wonder if any new podcasts are available?”

What’s that?  I should just use iTunes?  Maybe you’re right, but I’ve never liked the podcast subscription feature in iTunes.  I have to go through the pain of attaching my iPhone to my PC, refreshing all my subscriptions, and synching to iTunes.  Wait... did it just delete six unheard episodes?  Dang!  Maybe I have an irrational fear of the synch, but their UI just doesn’t seem to meet my needs.

The iPhone is perfectly capable of downloading podcasts on its own (PC-free), but you have to check each podcast manually, every day.  Bummer, dude.  Checking things repeatedly is never fun, I prefer getting notified.  So I’ve looked around and found a few options:

Subscribe via RSS

Most podcasts have a website containing a link to the RSS feed for their show.   You can subscribe using your favorite RSS reader (aka Google Reader).  Now you can group all your subscriptions into a folder and have one place to check every day.  The drawback is that you’re still stuck with checking a website then going somewhere else to manually download shows.  Weak, dude.

iPhone App #1  -  Podcast Push

I was initially stoked after finding this app.  It allows you to enter your podcast subscriptions and promises to pop up a “Push Notification” alerting you when new podcasts are available.  You can quickly tap the link and be downloading in seconds.  Sadly, this app does not consistently notify, and for some podcasts it completely fails to notify.  Seriously dude?  Great idea though!

iPhone App #2  -  Podcaster

This full featured app is my current fave.  After adding your subscriptions you can check them all for new shows with one swift tap.  You can even schedule it to check for new episodes at certain times of the day and download the automatically.  It does some things better than the iTunes app, such as displaying show details so you can decide if it’s worth a listen.  Some things aren’t as polished, like podcast searching.  But, at 99 cents, I’d say it’s a sweet deal.

Do you also suffer from podcast addiction syndrome?  How do you deal with this?  Android users:  are their better tools on the Droid?  I’d appreciate any suggestions.



I need to do some design work soon, and it has me thinking about the design process.  What’s the best way to go about designing software?  The answer can vary for different organizations.   Recently I took the “Software Design Techniques” class from PSU, which offered some solid tips.  Here’re my general recommendations: 

Set Some Goals Upfront

Eventually you’ll produce a design.  Maybe you’ve produced some very professional UML docs or a slick data-flow diagram.  Perhaps you’re like me and have scribbled some circles on a whiteboard and taken a picture of it with your phone.  In any event, the next step will be to ask: “Is this any good?”  To answer that question you’ll need to have established what “good” means for this project.  Set some goals at the beginning for what your design should achieve.  Keeping them in mind during the process will help.    

Know Thy Stakeholders

It can be tough to produce software that pleases everyone.  Stakeholders often have conflicting desires.  Product managers want it done fast, QA wants it to be easily testable, the ops team wants the deployment to be hassle-free and the end user is asking for an intuitive UI.  Your fellow engineers may have several technical priorities.  The challenge is to try to consider several perspectives as you proceed.  Hopefully your product/project manager can help you prioritize requirements and balance conflicting stakeholder needs.

Prepare for the Likely Changes

Let’s pretend you just produced the best design ever for a billing system.  You’re quite pleased with yourself.  Then, one month after release Bob from sales rushes into your office and says, “We need to import billing data from Company X… by next week!”  Ideally you’d have already talked to sales and known that the Company X integration was imminent.  It’s a great mental exercise to make a list of the top “likely changes” to the system that you and others foresee.  Again, your software can’t do everything and the architecture won’t respond to all requests with equal grace.  However, you should know the company’s priorities for future development, and those things shouldn’t require a full rewrite of the system.

Get it Reviewed

I mentioned before that code reviews are very helpful.  Reviews are great for design products as well.  Designing by committee isn’t fun, but this is a little different.  In a design review you present a fully baked (you hope) plan to some peers and solicit their feedback.  Maybe they’ll have tackled a similar problem last year, failed miserably, and found an open source tool that solves everything.    

On a team practicing some form of Agile development, you may be asked to produce a design quickly and get on with it.  It’s important to at least cover the basics if you want to arrive at a design that’s somewhat sustainable and doesn’t disgust the new guy you’ll hire this fall.  Do you have a sure-fire design tip or pet-peeve?

I recently read the book Rework, which questions our culture’s devaluation of sleep.  The book challenges several conventional ideas about being productive, but the parts on sleep hit close to home for me. 

The authors point out that we're less creative when we're tired.  This causes several problems.  We often just slog through mundane tasks if we're bushed.  Also, we fail to have insights or epiphanies as we perform our tasks.  The most productive workers aren't 10 times as fast as everyone else.  They don't work 10 times as long.  Often they're the ones that come up with creative solutions that take 1/10th the time. 

Overall I found Rework fairly entertaining.  It’s a quick read and full of tips about staying innovative, productive, and awake at work.

About The Author

Fred Brooks worked for IBM in the 50’s and 60’s as a manager for their OS/360 operating system.  He’s very articulate and uses plenty of humor and interesting historical references in his writing.   Here are a few of the book’s highlights:   

Brooks’s Law

Fred’s quote "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later” became known as Brook’s Law.  He argues that just as nine women can’t make a baby in one month, additional developers don’t necessarily help you release software sooner.  This is caused by the communication and training required when adding new team members.

No Silver Bullet

Brooks asserts that there is no magical tool or methodology that will provide software engineers a 10 fold productivity gain.  He separates the essential difficulties of producing software (e.g. Complexity, Difficult to Visualize) from the “accidental” difficulties (Lack of Tools, Clunky Languages).  It’s a good concept to keep in mind with the next development fad comes along offering to solve all of your problems. 

Conceptual Integrity

The book emphasizes the importance of preserving the conceptual integrity of the system, especially on large projects.  Brooks makes the case for a single architect (or small group of architects) creating the design of the overall product.  He offers some good tips on how the people working on the big picture should interact with the engineers implementing the design.

Why Would I Read This Book?

I’m a big fan of history and think there’s much to be learned from the successes and failures of past generations.  Although this book discusses some ancient programming practices that we (thankfully) don’t have to deal with today, I think it’s a great read for anyone concerned with delivering a software product on time and under budget.

However, despite its usefulness, RSS hasn't really seen massive adoption. Recently I've heard many techy types exclaiming they've stopped checking their RSS Reader. Instead they're finding more relevant links on Twitter. Social sites like Twitter are specifically built to encourage a lot of sharing. If you use Twitter to follow people in your industry, you'll inevitably be exposed to interesting discussion and links to very relevant topics.

Another emerging player in the link-sharing business is Facebook. Unlike RSS readers, Facebook has seen massive adoption, now boasting over 400 million users. Average folks can understand Facebook's simple interface. They’re also finding that it’s pretty easy to share news articles and Youtube links with their friends and family on Facebook.

So, have social media sites killed RSS before it reached its full potential? Personally I'm still using RSS for a number of things. Here are a few of my favorite uses for RSS:

Handy Uses for RSS

1. Blogs - I'm a big fan of getting notified rather than constantly checking websites. If you follow a few dozen blogs, you don't want to be checking each of them every day for new posts. RSS readers allow you to browse quickly through new posts.

 

2. Discover People on Twitter - Twitter's advanced search provides an RSS feed for your search results. For example, if you're an avid rock climber, you can search for people within 25 miles of your city who mention "rock climbing" in their tweet. Checking the RSS feed can help you discover local, like-minded enthusiasts.

 

3. Craigslist Searches - Craigslist also provides an RSS feed for search results. Let's say you’re looking for an apartment downtown for between $600 and $1200. After your first search, subscribe to the RSS feed, and you can stop obsessively checking Craigslist every few hours! The most recent results will be waiting for you in Google Reader.

Do you think RSS will survive? Will it be killed by more popular information sharing tools? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Uncomputer

Daniel Tenner's post "iPad: and Apple for Mom" explains why the iPad may be exactly what the masses have been waiting for. He argues that "most people don't need a proper computer at all."

Marketing

Rory Marinich's amusing post "This is why it's worth learning about advertising" discusses Apple's sales pitch: Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price. He describes the iPad as: "simply put, a magical screen that can do anything you ever want it to, no matter what that is."

Inspiration

Miguel de Icaza's post "iPad - Inspirational Hardware" talks about his excitement for building applications on a touch-based computer. He wants to build apps using his favorite language, C# (which I use at my job).

Regret

Alex Payne's post "On the iPad" expresses his concern that the closed nature of the device may be detrimental to the next generation. He states "if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today."

My Personal Take

I'd love to use the iPad as an information consuming device. Often times I read news in bed and other non-desk locations. The iPhone has provided me with lots of innovative apps that help me find exactly the information I'm after. Although I don't have $500 burning a hole in my pocket, I can certainly see the allure and this new book/blog/news reading gadget. Am I too caught up in all the hype?

What Are The Benefits of Using a Programming Standard?

Many good things can happen when you draft up a programming standard. I think one of the best effects is that your team will start discussing best practices and quality. One or two people can create the document then present it to the group for discussion. If everyone starts abiding by the guidelines, it can add consistency to your code base, making it seem more like the work of one author. The person maintaining the code five years from now will love you for it.

Also, you may want to start doing code reviews at some point. Numerous studies show that finding and fixing defects early is much cheaper than discovering them after you release. Code reviews can help spot problems before you release to QA. If your team has already agreed on a programming standard, you can use it to evaluate code. The religious debates about curly brace placement will have already occurred, so you don't have to re-hash those discussions during each review.

How Do I Get Started?

My advice is to aim for a one or two page document. Break it up into a few sections (e.g. Naming Conventions, Comments, Error Handling). Include a brief description at the start of each section that explains why the topic is important. Try not to use too much strict language ("Thou shalt never...") and focus on general guidelines ("Avoid methods with more than X lines of code").

If you're looking for examples, the book Code Complete by Steve McConnell includes lots of checklist and well-researched rules. If you'd like to see the programming standard I created in class, send me a note.

Do you use a programming standard on your team? Is it helping?

Gmail Notifier - Great for most users. It puts a little blue envelope in your system tray when you have new mail. Double click it to access your Gmail account.

Gmail Notifer Plus for Windows 7 - This notifier takes advantage of some new Windows 7 task bar features. It provides options when you hover over it, allowing you to preview and open new emails.

What About Other Email Providers?

Actually, my favoriate email notifier is Digsby, which handles all of your Instant Messaging needs in addition to notifications for social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn) and a variety of email providers: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts. I find there notification interface to be the most intuitive and useful.

Digsby Gmail Notification

What About Other Things I Check Too Much, Like Twitter?

One of my main gripes when I started using Twitter was that I wasn't notified when someone started talking to me. People converse with you on Twitter by "mentioning" you, which means they include your username with the "@" symbol in front ("@martymatheny" in my case) in their tweet. Twitter would email me if someone sent me a Direct Message, but not if they mentioned me. I didn't want to repeatedly check Twitter, so I started using Boxcar, which is an iPhone app. Boxcar kindly sends me a "push notification" on my iPhone when I'm mentioned, so I know when to engage. It can also notify you based on the results of any Twitter search query (e.g. "MyCompany").

Cool, What About Blogs?

The best way to check blogs and news sources is use an RSS reader, but that's a topic for another post. Do you have a favorite notification service?