“I don’t care how good you are at programming, finding bugs, whatever. If you’re rude, or if you speak poorly to people who don’t understand your… quirks… you will wind up being shunted to the side. No one wants to work with someone who makes them feel beat down all the time, or someone who they simply can’t understand, or someone whose reaction to every issue is to start wailing about the end of the world.”
– Catherine Powell (via 37signals)
“In every project there is always one file that strikes fear into the hearts of all programmers everywhere. These files are usually full of code that could render a battle-hardy coder to complete gibbering tears within seconds and that is just for looking at it – if they have to make changes to the file then they usually make their farewell calls to their loved ones, have a swift drink of something to bolster their courage and run into the battlefield screaming as they go. Somewhere in the world is an honour monument to those who fell.”
– Byron Atkinson-Jones of Introversion discussing game UI, though his comments apply equally well to any project.
“Here’s what sucks: writing software with the goal of producing something IT managers want to buy, rather than producing something that people want to use.”
– Jamie Zawinski
Uhh… almost done with the Basic Rights Oregon site…
It’s funny. Web design is a completely different mindset from programming. I guess that’s obvious, but it didn’t really occur to me.
When you program, you focus monomanaically on this set of variables, procedures, and tasks that need to get done. It’s almost like juggling, only instead of balls you have machine parts and you have to assemble them into a working engine without dropping anything. Any distraction is a major setback.
But building a website is more like one continuous stream of distractions; you have to take all these separate bits of information and puzzle them together such that they work together and are easy to navigate. More of a herding process. And instead of communicating your intention to a machine, you’re presenting your content to people; and hopefully making it easy enough for them to forget about the machine.
But when you’re also writing the code for the back-end… you can get confused. The ol’ bug-eyed intense focus doesn’t really help you assemble a site’s content… it’s a different “zone” to get into.
haha, OH MAN, i rule.
some coworker just walked in and said, “hey, steve, program X is broken.” so i said, “you gotta grease the wheels!” he thought i meant money, so i corrected him, “give me liquor.”
“that i can handle!” he said, and walked out!
a minute later, he returned with a huge bottle of crown royal and gave me a swig to get his problem fixed!!
THIS JOB STILL HAS POTENTIAL