Couple of things I learned the hard way yesterday:
Advantages of pre-deploy code review, over post-deploy audit: Authors have a strong incentive to craft small, well-formed changes that will be readily understood, to explain them adequately, and to provide appropriate test plans, test coverage and context. Reviewers have a real opportunity to make significant… Continue reading →
I like to think of funded startups vs. bootstrapped web sites like the split between signed and unsigned bands. Think about what a band has to do if they sign with a major label. They write music, perform/record it, and play it. Now think about… Continue reading →
There’s a useful conversation happening in an internal Automattic P2 I thought I’d take the liberty to share. From Mike: Consider the audience when you write a commit message. What is that audience? It’s at least two groups of people: Your coworkers: You’re telling everyone… Continue reading →
Writing beginner level tutorials. A number of useful tips. My favorite: “use words and phrases that your reader can Google to find more information.” For producers of documentation, I think the biggest challenge is putting yourself in the mindset of the reader. The second biggest challenge is closing the feedback loop between the person who has the knowledge and the person who wants the knowledge.
Today we differentiate between blogging on blogging platforms and sharing on social platforms, but that is just semantics. The essence of blogging is not defined by a platform but by what I learned from Dave and his blogging platform — that media now is raw,… Continue reading →
Meet wpshell – the power of WordPress at your prompt. wpshell is an undiscovered gem. Someone should lead a WordCamp talk about it and the secrets it holds.
In other words, my theory is: Cheating (on a systematic level) happens because students try to get an edge over their peers/competitors. Even top-notch students cheat, in order to ensure a perfect grade. Fighting cheating is not something that professors can do well in the long run, and it is counterproductive by itself. By channeling this competitive energy into creative activities, in which you cannot cheat, everyone is better off.
Panos Ipeirotis — Why I will never pursue cheating again. A computer scientist teaching in a business school details a year of trying to combat cheating on assignments. Overall, he spent 45 hours addressing the problem during a 32 hour lecture course, and 22 of 108 enrolled students admitted cheating. Solutions could include:
Takeaway: If plagiarism is your biggest worry, you’re doing it wrong.
Hyperlocal Post-Mortem: Lessons Learned From InJersey. Fantastic pragmatic takeaways from Ted Mann. Highlights: local advertisers don’t like self-serve, build your site cheaply, and make it ridiculously easy for contributors to publish (e.g. don’t have them email posts to editors, and then require the editor to copy/paste, edit, and then publish).
How hyperlocal has a future. Dave Winer’s advice for publishers: “be sure you control your own publishing and distribution.” NYU has a hyperlocal conclave this Saturday with a tools discussion that’s sure to be fun.