Posts
Knowledge elicitation as intervention
If you’re not reading Cedric Chin’s Commoncog essays, you’re missing out. The most recent one (Tacit Expertise Extraction, Software …Infocom games and accessing knowledge
Another brick in the usefulness of the graph model of knowledge: back in the 80s, I played various Infocom games – essentially, interactive …Conceptual graphs as understanding
Students struggle more in classes where they have less background knowledge of the subject. Research to expand an area of knowledge is …Tapestry
Some time ago, I was reading a book about the history of jazz in China, and something about it put me off. On reflection, I realized that my …A future without linters
I have a vision of a wonderful future. A future without arguments about camelCase and snake_case. A future without debates over tabs and …Judging expertise
One of the reasons researchers focus on experts instead of expertise is that it seems easier to find the one than the other — you can look …Building Reg Watch
Ragtag partners with Insightus to protect North Carolina votersTMTOWTDI and expertise
One of the guiding principles of the Perl programming language is TMTOWTDI — there’s more than one way to do it (where “it” is “pretty much …Everyday expertise
The Winter Olympics are on! We’re in the first week of watching athletes who’ve spent years honing their skills and now get to amaze us with …My January in reading and podcasts
I had so much fun doing my Reading and Podcast years in review for 2017 that I’ve decided to do more frequent look-backs this year. I don’t …The continuity of expertise
One of the (many) things that makes research on the highest levels of expertise challenging is that — by definition — there aren’t that many …Expertise and attention
So, my last few posts started to describe a theory of expertise as something like: the set of factors acquired over time that help someone …My 2017 in podcasts
I had a lot of fun doing my post about my reading for the past year , so I figured I’d take a shot at doing something similar for my podcast …My 2017 in reading
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts — three years, to be exact — but I had a few goals going into this year that I wanted …Expertise: success in a domain
So, in my last post I defined expertise as the set of acquired factors that contribute to success in a domain, and waved my hands at …Expertise (n.)
If we’re talking about “expertise” instead of “experts,” it’s only natural to wonder what “expertise” actually is. Hold on to your butts, …Expert (n.)
I’m doing a deep dive into the research on expertise (or, maybe more accurately, continuing to dive into that research — it’s been something …Attention, please
I’m flying back from Nordic Ruby (my first conference talk in three years; my last one was at Nordic Ruby, too, which made for a lovely …My 2014 in Reading
I had a lot of fun writing up my year in reading last year, so I thought I’d do it again for 2014. Goals I mentioned in last year’s post …Wanting to be, not to do
It’s about a month and a half until my 10th wedding anniversary, and I’ve been reflecting on how I was feeling before I got married. I …Predictions for Comixology+Amazon
Note: I don’t have any special insight into the business arrangements here; I haven’t been paying as much attention to the comics industry …Postmortems: trust and confidence
I am a strong believer in the value of a good postmortem after a customer-affecting incident — and after internal incidents, and after …Two problems with antifragility
I’m no fan of Nassim Taleb (of black swan, antifragility, and needing-an-editor fame), but I forced myself to finish his last book …My 2013 in reading
I’ve been using Goodreads reliably this year to track my reading (well, the book and graphic novel portions of my reading). Over the last …Problems with self-organization
I just listened to the November 21st episode of the Freakonomics podcast , on what economists call “spontaneous order .” It’s an interesting …On valuing people
Ernie and I are going through many of the same experiences right now, so his post on how interviews are broken resonated with me. In …On contact management
I have a problem: every time I open up an application that has a contact list, I find something confusing or frustrating. With Skype, it’s …On interview coding
Oh hey, I’m unemployed again (this time was, sadly, involuntary – my company shut down). That means I’m doing a lot of talking, to hiring …On Ansible
In my post on flexible infrastructures, I mentioned in passing that I was managing my ops work with Ansible rather than the more traditional …On a flexible infrastructure
I’ve been having a lot of fun over the past couple of weeks shading into the ops side of things – I’ve been experimenting with an …On GitHub, DDOSs, and deploys
When GitHub goes down, you can almost hear the wailing in the streets. GitHub has cemented itself as a central part of many development …On a schema.rb mystery
Imagine, if you will, a database table with your average, everyday foreign key. It’s an INTEGER column. Now, imagine a coworker opens a pull …On the conference I'd like to see
I’m in Sweden at the moment, taking part in an amazing Nordic Ruby conference. Yesterday, I gave a talk called Better: A Field Guide to …On what I want to do
We just wrapped the 2013 edition of RailsConf, and I’m both exhausted and excited. There’s nothing quite like being surrounded by 1500 of …On fairness and developer salaries
I’m taking advantage of being funemployed by taking a few online courses, including Dan Ariely’s A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior …On my productivity
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my upcoming funemployment (which has since begun). I mentioned in that post that my past jobs have …On "monitoring"
I’m at Monitorama this week; it’s been a great conference, but a weird one for me. This is the first conference I’ve been to in years where …On my recent brush with rhabdo
First off: thank you to everyone who sent their thoughts and well-wishes. It was extremely heartening to open up Twitter or Facebook and see …On taking time to think
I’ve gotten into a really bad habit when it comes to my work: every job in software development I’ve ever had has essentially been an …On remote work
I've worked remotely to a greater or lesser extent for three or four years now -- ranging from working from home a few days a week to being …On "people" problems
My friend Justin Gehtland tweet this a bit ago: At its root, every problem is a *people* problem, because only people have problems.Without …On Integrity
Some years ago, I remember hearing about a novel (short story, maybe?) by a futurist-minded science fiction author. The premise is that in …On Radical Honesty
OK, who's heard of Radical Honesty? My introduction to it was in AJ Jacobs' My Life as an Experiment. The premise is that you don't lie, and …On Self-knowledge
Picking up on that "how do I know what I think" quote -- let's start to tie a little bit of this into topics that might be more interesting …On Self-Deception
I was listening to an interview with Dan Ariely on NPR earlier today -- he was talking about topics from his latest book (The Honest Truth …On Levels of Description
I've been fascinated by levels of description for as long as I can remember: physics, chemistry, and biology as a kid -- with both expected …On Interface Segregation
As promised, here's the first installment of my Fractal Design series. I'd like to kick things off with what might seem to be an odd choice …On Fractal Design
I'm on my way back home after a great Ruby Hoedown in Nashville, where I gave a talk called "Fractal Design." This is the second(ish) time …On This Blog
Oh! I should mention -- this is the fourth, fifth, or twenty-third incarnation of my blog, all told. It's running on Posterous, which …On Starting
Back in May, I gave a talk at Ignite RailsConf on being awesome. The presentation revolved around three (well, two and a half) rules, of …On Haml
I've been very happy to see that, for the most part, the evangelism around Haml has died down over the past year or so -- it felt like you …Rumbled
As I'm just now coming out of the caffeine- and sleep-deprivation-induced haze that was my weekend, I thought it might be interesting to …Event Updates
Yes, yes, I know I've been gone for a while. What can I say? I've been really busy. That said, I'm rejiggering priorities, and pretty high …Developer Day Austin wrapup
It's been a few days since we wrapped up Developer Day Austin, and I'm only now able to catch my breath – a few snowmageddon- and …Job descriptions vs. goals
Raise your hand if you have a job description - a paragraph or eight that describe your role and responsibilities in your current …Letter-writing
I had a thought the other day... I wonder if the demise of correspondence via letters has resulted in a reduction in significant thought. …CodeMash recap
[[posterous-content:EJwrquhHwuicvefDasuH]] So, after some difficulties getting the planes to fly on time, I finally made it home from …Design-first development
The first RubyConf talk I gave was entitled Cleanliness Is Next to Domain-Specificity; in it, I spoke about DSLs, and gave an example of how …Practice isn't fun
It's a new year, and it's about time for a hard truth: practice, when done properly, isn't fun. I'd love to be able to tell you that it is – …My five-year anniversary with Ruby
My five-year anniversary with Viget Labs is approaching quickly – I started here back in February 2005. Before I reach that milestone, …Weekly goals
In light of the impending new year, I thought I'd offer an alternative to the associated flood of well-intentioned but ultimately-doomed …The flood of ideas
Seth's post yesterday struck a chord with me, as it reminded me of how I felt a few months ago. At the time, I was posting extremely …Irreversibility
I'm generally a pretty calm guy. We've all got pet peeves, though, and one of my occurs all too frequently. I'm talking about people who …Failure is bad.
I just read a post from Micah Baldwin that I found very interesting, so here's a quick response: Failure is bad. Success is good. Sure, …NoSQL talk report
I've given my "Comics" Is Hard talk about five times now, and the feedback consistently fell into one of two buckets: Some people wanted to …Twitter lists and the App Store
Twitter's lists are a fascinating new feature, and people are using them in a bewildering variety of ways. I think one of the most …RailsConf 2010
[[posterous-content:vidmnkAIvtEHqHcylwcn]]In case you didn't notice, the CFP for RailsConf 2010 in Baltimore went out yesterday – and along …Na[X]WriMo
[[posterous-content:ICkAFbstaprzDIahdsEp]]We're rapidly approaching November, which means that another NaNoWriMo is almost upon us. NaNo's …Speaker X again??
I've seen one particular complaint about Ruby conferences fairly often over the past couple of years – people question why the same speakers …H&P: What you can't say
[[posterous-content:oBGotzwudxstbsyyhfrG]]I recently read Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters (a collection of essays from his site, …Drawing the line
I was listening to a program on NPR recently, and I heard the interviewee say something interesting about discovering the guitar. …Developer Day Boulder
Last weekend, I was out in Boulder, organizing and MCing for our last Developer Day of 2009. It was an exciting conference, bracketed by the …Changing the default
I create (or at least start) a lot of microapplications – my "Ideas - Dev" list in Evernote is huge, and I try to pick off a new one every …Conferences suck
Disclaimer: I've said some of the things in this post, as have some of my friends, some of my acquaintances, and some people I don't like. …Follow-through
There's something very strange about the concept of follow-through. Ask a physicist, and they'll tell you that nothing you do with the club …Why should I register for your site?
Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. That's one of my favorite Einstein quotes. Unfortunately, it seems to be ignored more …My beef with panels
[[posterous-content:uleIIrdnzGuxAkFulgdg]] http://www.flickr.com/photos/betweenloveandlike/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 I've been to a lot of events …Refreshing the Triangle
Triangle-area friends! If you're free this Thursday (September 24th), come on out to Bronto's offices for Refresh the Triangle. I'm going to …Application templates in Rails 3
Here's a trick for creating modular templates in Rails 3: use the apply method Say you like to use Rails templates, but you find them a …My workflow - now Cucumber-enhanced!
[[posterous-content:npromobotiplCJFzxDBp]]So I've been using Cucumber somewhat heavily for a while now, on both personal and client …WindyCityRails recap
So I spent a lovely 30 or so hours in Chicago over the weekend for WindyCityRails (as I mentioned previously), and despite the short stay, I …Speaking updates
Several things have come together over the past week or so, with the result that I've pretty much solidified my speaking engagements for the …Polyglot persistence
Polyglot programming was everywhere in the (developer-centric) news what, last year? That is the idea that good developers should be …Go west, young developer
[[posterous-content:sgnwcAejwckatlhHxfhx]]Developer Day has visited Durham, DC, and Boston so far.... Isn't it about time we left the east …Vending machine* usability
* I grew up in the South, which means I actually call these "Coke machines," but in the interest of generality I'll refrain from that in …Judging the Rumble
Whew! In case you didn't know, last weekend was the Rails Rumble - an annual, 48-hour sprint in which teams of 1-4 people build complete, …The virtue of practice
[[posterous-content:CEpgEFwlwAwHkECIikda]] http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/ / CC BY 2.0 Practice makes perfect - anonymous When I was …Vote for me!
[[posterous-content:aIhHctacBwkckJrDbqBr]]I've noticed a bit of a trend among some conferences lately - they're outsourcing/crowdsourcing …Developer Day Boston wrapup
This past weekend was exciting, because it was the first instance of Developer Day held away from Viget's and Relevance's home territory - …The presenter's pentathlon
As I mentioned before, I'm thinking a lot about technical presentations and speaking more generally now. As part of that, I've had some fun …How to compete against commercial competition
Rob Walling makes basically one very good point in his post "How to Compete Against Open Source Competition," and that point is this: Open …A blast from the past, for technical speakers
I've been doing a lot of reading about technical presentations lately - both for my own benefit (since I'm speaking much more often now) and …Recentering
I've been blogging on and off for ... heck, years now, and I've tried a lot of different approaches during that time. Among other things, …