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I seek people who value quality as its own reward. I appreciate those who think that a job well done is not just “nice to have” but a mark of honesty, integrity and the producer’s self-worth. Behind every published word, every implemented design and every piece of running code, there is a body of knowledge, [...]

So Safari 4 Beta is out, but it’s apparent that they’re still not designing the browser for me. The things that keep me with Firefox are above all its extensions and general customizability. WebKit is a better rendering engine and Safari’s UI widgets are arguably second to none, but the browser itself may as well [...]

Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence.

—Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., “The Mythical Man-Month”
In the old model, large companies built large pieces of software and had to support nearly every user and their myriad edge cases and behaviors. This meant fixing [...]

This is a call for all developers of websites and web applications that have a user authentication system. If I have to register for your site, please don’t make me register again for your forums or customer support app!
It’s fine to use third party software for discussion forums, but it’s important to put forth the [...]

Great software development is a creative discipline that requires skillful individuals, effective organization and undying passion from all who are involved. There are many theories about developer productivity, engineering management and company organization, but few that make an honest attempt to reconcile all of these factors and present an approach that both builds from proven [...]

Somehow it still isn’t understood that programmers don’t produce their best work during any specific set of hours or only when they are in the office. Programming is an activity cognitively closer to philosophizing than it is to elementary math or physics. The best work doesn’t get done between 9am and lunch, with Sue from [...]

So I woke up today to MySQL barfing all over my site:
WordPress database error: [Incorrect key file for table './mydb/wp_posts.MYI'; try to repair it]
Googling the error pushed me toward the myisamchk tool. So I went into MySQL’s data dir on my server as root and tried to run a repair on my files:
myisamchk *.MYI
But I [...]

This is a brief follow-up to Faulty Firing (see that post for the description of the tests) with updated results in the latest browsers.
Firefox 2.0.0.7 (Mozilla 1.8.1.7) & Firefox 3.0a9 (“Minefield”)

mousedown, focus, mouseup, click, change
focus, click, change
blur, focus, click

Internet Explorer 7

mousedown, focus, mouseup, click
click, focus
change, blur, click, focus

Safari 3.0.3 Beta

mousedown, mouseup, change, click
change, click
click

Opera 9.5 [...]

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

-John W. Gardner

Quality is important in plumbing, philosophy, and coding all the same…

Bank of America requires that your password be only alphanumeric.

Wait. Let me get this straight. You want me to supply a password that consists of only letters and numbers, thereby increasing the likelihood of simple dictionary attacks? And this is “to make sure [my] passcode is sufficiently secure”? Apparently there are “invalid symbols” that I [...]