I wrote this talk for the Ruby Group tonight, but because of the horrible weather, only one other guy was able to show up. (Thanks Hector!) I'll be doing the talk again in March, and hopefully the weather will be much better. In the meanwhile, I'm too excited about how the slideshow turned out, so I'm releasing it now.
I read this book over the weekend, and I was really happy with it. It reminded me of their first book "Getting Real", but "Rework" is less programmer- and startup-oriented, and is more geared to an audience of managers. Each chapter is no more than 3 pages long, but there's no filler whatsoever: only the essential information you need for each tip is written per chapter.
And there are a LOT of good tips. What are you waiting for? Get it already!
Kids today know how to Google before they learn how to ride a bike. Some of them may have Googled how to ride a bike before they actually got one to ride. We're living in the information age, and to say it changes everything is an understatement. Anything you want to do, regardless of its proximity to you, you can find information on how to do it.
I'm a little crushed when I hear people describe the iPad, with its "closed box" mentality, as signaling a massive move away from the hacker mentality. That if you can't open it, you don't really own it.
That's silly. The iPad wasn't meant to be easy to mess with the hardware. But it has a really strong API for writing whatever you want on it. People complain about the App Store, but you don't have to use it to mess around on your own. (And I personally prefer the streamlined interface that the App Store gives you to downloading individual programs from different websites by hand.)
If you want to hack on hardware, get an Arduino. I plan on getting one, with an electronics kit, to spur on my daughters' imaginations when they get older. The spirit of the young programmer is alive and well.
