Personal Life
Make an Impact
Recently, it has come to my attention that not all developers have the ability to make an impact.
But that begs the question, what does making an impact mean?
Making an impact.
It's coming out the door - swinging. So much of a developers role, especially in a start up, is determined by their first 3 days. Day 1, yes, come in, settle down, welcome aboard. Day 2, start asking all of the questions you had from day 1, and for heavens sake, do something besides look busy.
Day 3, you better have your shit together, and you should be swinging for the fences.
Don't ask for something to do, demand a project. And while you're doing, don't ask questions the very second you think you don't know something.
Look for the answer first.
It's this mentality that I find so damn frustrating - all of the answers should be in the code base. Run a damn grep on your project base, and find an answer. There's no excuse for any mid, to upper mid level programmer to be asking stupid questions. By stupid question, I'm refering to in the inabilty to traverse the code base in search of functions, methods, answers.
Make an impact, 3 days.
Someone Failed to Inform Me
Someone apparently failed to inform me that the video game industry is freaking crazy.
And I love it 
I've recently started working at Zynga , and I couldn't be happier.
What this mean though, is that there will be fewer and fewer blog posts about programming related issues. Instead, I'll try to focus on theory rather than implimentation.
Until then, everyone should feel free to head over to zynga and try some games
Breathalyzer for your Gmail
Personally, I think this is a pretty neat little gizmo. Basically, in a blog post at: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html
All you have to do is answer a few simple math problems, and boom, off it goes. I think the idea here is it gives you a second chance to reconsider your email. And, if you're too drunk to think of an answer, perhaps you should wait till the next day to send it.
I think it's neat, and of course, you can turn it on and off, so if anyone is complaining about that, well, they're just silly.
Quote from “Children of the Mind”
Grego shook his head. "Yes it does, Olhado. Death undoes everything."
Olhado shrugged. "Then why do you bother doing everything, Grego? Because someday you will die. Why should anyone ever have children? Someday they will die, their children will die, all children will die. Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we were there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth -- what is, what was, what will be -- not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. If we die, then our death has meaning to the rest of the universe. Even if our lives are unknown, the fact that someone lived here, and died, that will have repercussions, that will shape the universe."