dcminter

The Practice of Programming (Kernighan and Pike 1999): "As a personal choice, we tend not to use debuggers beyond getting a stack trace or the value of a variable or two. One reason is that it is easy…

Did you check the headers as well? I've seen quite a few emails that had the "body" of the email in one while the real body was empty or contained similar noise - I presume there are some broken mail …

As a London based hacker this chimes with me. There are groups such as the BCS that are supposedly there to nurture IT networking, but their events schedule looks a bit dry. I've found some of the ent…

As noted by others here, CSS3 style columns are supported in Firefox with a -moz prefix. In my opinion the implementation is barely usable though, because if you have too much text to fit onto the pag…

I'm curious then - could you explain how you approach CSS based layout for forms? Drop me an email (dave@paperstack.com) if you want to discuss it offline.

Brilliant. What are the solutions then?

"Tables might be easier when you're dealing with a single page, but any site that has even a slight variety in layouts will be much easier with CSS." That's a valid point. Nonetheless I think that it …

I tried, and evidently failed, to make it clear that I am not in any way advocating a return to table based layout. I'm just frustrated that CSS is so much harder than table based layout to actually i…

To answer some of your direct questions: "I'm not sure what the author's obsession with JavaScript fixes is" Well, I'm not sure "obsessed" is the right word. But when I try to find the solution to any…

"You need to know the medium you work in." I'm not sure. Maybe you are right - but for me the problem is that the designers that I can afford who know CSS don't produce such pretty designs as the ones…

Part of the problem for me, however, is that I can't assume that designers know CSS, and I can't assume that the designers will know how to use their tools to spit out CSS that's compatible with the a…

"I've always assumed that implied in his articles is "my site is how you should do it."" But why? He doesn't say that anywhere. He doesn't even lay down rules about how you should build any site. He…

Interesting link. It's amusing that in the comments someone cites SCSI as proof that coding to a standard can be sufficient. The trade association holds "plugfests" ( e.g. http://www.scsita.org/news_…

This is something of an ad hominem. Jakob's site having poor usability does not automatically invalidate his usability arguments. See this article for his own view on the matter: http://www.guardian.…

Not directly pertinent to your original question, but since you're interested in science articles, I'd recommend tracking the Ars Technica "Nobel Intent" science news feed: http://arstechnica.com/jou…

Even if one takes an amoral view of it, there is a risk that the people you were investing in will now waste time investigating a non-existent technology. Or that they will incorrectly discount things…

I would just have assumed that he meant Accenture and mis-spoke. Ok, if he has a pattern of saying dumb things it's different, but if he just goes off on one for a moment - why would you rub his nose …

If I was keen to get (or keep) VC funding, I doubt I'd be in any hurry to tell a VC that he was smoking crack whatever I actually thought. While I'm probably a little naive, it also just wouldn't occu…

But "real" Google's just as good for that: http://www.google.com/search?q=globalrev+site://news.ycombin... I think it's reasonable to assume on a "Hacker News" site that the clientele will be up to …

Speaking as a 36-year old in the throes of testing his app I bloody hope not! If you're sufficiently clear of responsibilities that you can do this, well, you'll always regret it if you don't.

Many of the people who critique Nielsen don't seem to appreciate that he uses empirical measurement (rather than aesthetic judgement or opinion) to determine what is "good" or "bad" design. His column…

Seeing Gaudy Night there suggests to me that I should read the others, of which I'm woefully ignorant.

Yes and no (is there ever any other answer?) I enjoy unit testing when it all lights up green and I'm doing TDD. What I don't enjoy is retrofitting unit tests to my code. Time spent debugging the unit…

Assuming you're looking for a slightly hacker oriented biography then I can heartily recommend "The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Inventive Life of Robert Hooke" by Stephen Inwood. It gives an interestin…

I have no advice, but this worries me: "The product [...], has zero features other than what we consider the one, basic, bare minimum feature of the product space." That sounds like a well targeted pr…

Yep: "The places where NASA scientists have used Java for this mission is all on the ground side right now." http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/mars.html …

I ditched my TV but I still have a projector. That way I can watch things I really like, but it's enough of a hassle that I have to really want to. It works well for me, anyway.

I rather like Enterprise Architect as an ER tool.