Nov 11, 2007
Deployment is a logical thing to include in an IDE. If the Web is truly the new development platform, then an IDE should run on the Web.

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Nov 11, 2007
The inclination to design and build software by oneself, from scratch, is the single best indicator of [programming] success.

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Nov 10, 2007
The ecosystem would make much more sense if it wasn’t designed by a unitary Who but, rather, created by a horde of deities - say from the Hindu or Shinto religions. This handily explains both the ubiquitous purposefulnesses, and the ubiquitous conflicts: The fox and rabbit were both designed, but by distinct competing deities. I wonder if anyone ever remarked on the seemingly excellent evidence thus provided for Hinduism over Christianity. Probably not.

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Nov 10, 2007
People either have something they work on in their free time or they don’t. A staggering fraction of the people I know would just switch on the TV, or pick up a book, or idly surf the web or pick up the phone and call someone when they have a couple of hours of free time.

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Nov 10, 2007
Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation. It may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

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Nov 10, 2007
Like many other forms of motivated skepticism, motivated continuation can try to disguise itself as virtuous rationality. Who can argue against gathering more evidence? I can. Evidence is often costly, and worse, slow, and there is certainly nothing virtuous about refusing to integrate the evidence you already have. You can always change your mind later.

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Nov 10, 2007
hard work == discipline == genius is the illusory conclusion made by those on the outside looking in. When you are truly inspired, in the ‘flow’, doesn’t that feel like the easiest, most natural state you have ever experienced?

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Nov 10, 2007
Natural selection probably hit its complexity bound no more than a hundred million generations after multicellular organisms got started. Since then, over the last 600 million years, evolutions have substituted new complexity for lost complexity, rather than accumulating adaptations.

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Nov 10, 2007
The easier a piece of software is to write, the worse it’s implemented in practice. Why? Easy software projects can be done by almost any random person, so they are.

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Nov 10, 2007
We have to get better at helping people learn on the job. The idea that you can decide whether someone is a good or bad fit for your organization at point zero is going to have to be thrown out the window. You’re going to have to create internal structures that will help people grow into positions; that’s where the real opportunity is going to be.
Malcolm Gladwell imagines a more tightly coupled world than Paul Graham

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