Remka Rumbles

“ People commit to projects, and projects are self-organizing; there are leads, but they’re chosen by informal consensus, there’s no prestige or money attached to the label, and it’s only temporary – a lead is likely to be an individual contributor on their next project. Leads have no authority other than that everyone agrees it will help the project to have them doing coordination. Each project decides for itself about testing, check-in rules, how often to meet (not very), and what the goal is and when and how to get there. And each project is different. ”

“ When Roy became preacher, he was a little bit of a slow learner, so we sent him to seminary school,” Andy told me. “They asked him ‘Where was Jesus born?’ And he says ‘Pittsburgh.’ So they say ‘Nope, Bethlehem.’ And then Roy says, ‘I knew it was some place in Pennsylvania.’ ”

“ I won’t hire someone who doesn’t code in their free time is Siliconvallese for I don’t want to hire any grownups because they remind me of my parents. ”

“ When you’re writing framework-compliant code, it creates the illusion that you’re working when you’re really just wasting time, due to the cost of your stupid framework/language choice. ”

“ I see why node.js is attractive to idiots. At some point, they picked up some javascript, and now want to use javascript for everything. Once an idiot learns a little about one programming language, they don’t want to bother learning others. ”

“ If you look at who’s flocking to Node, it’s largely web developers who have been working in dynamic languages with what we could politely call limited performance characteristics. ”

“ I’m so confident in my analysis “Rails sucks!”, that I can nearly conclusively say that you’re a parasite or psychopath, if you like Rails. ”

“ Dès lors, si une femelle tombe enceinte d’un geek, on dit alors d’elle qu’elle est overcloquée. ”

“ Scrolling down the page, then, is an opportunity to view the page as an unfolding temporal event, not as a static snapshot. ”

“ This is the gist of multithreaded programming. Just like these cats running around performing tasks, a process is broken down into multiple threads of execution. ”

“ It is interesting if selling Google AdWords over direct mail was so successful, because Google Adwords itself must be the best ads to reach customers directly. But it is true that many Japanese companies were not attracted to purchase and manage internet advertising directly, rather stay with representatives like Dentsu. ”

“ The key is understanding that the design conversation is a long one, it may start with static comps but it continues through development. The more you can fuse the two (in your process and in your personnel) the more successful you’ll be. ”

“ The heart of it is really in the conversation, the discourse between design and code. Everyone around the table was an excellent designer, and we all made contributions in different ways. ”

“ On the Benefits of Designing in Browser (Or, Why Static Designs Kind’ve Suck) Before we get too far, let’s get something straight: We hate trying to show all the complex facets of an interactive design using design software like InDesign or Illustrator. It’s inefficient, inaccurate and incomplete. Only a masochist could enjoy producing page after page of comps just to show a simple link state or a dropdown animation. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had things like that figured out only to throw it away once coding commenced. All that time is better spent just coding the behavior. And in the end, your design isn’t an accurate representation of the final product — it’s not usable. You can’t place it in front of users and get much feedback of any value (unless you like to let users dictate your color scheme). It’s also easy to leave things out of a static design. What happens when the user clicks here? What happens to the design between these breakpoints? In code, you’ve got to answer these questions. With static pages, it’s easier to ignore. ”

“ What are the key breakpoints? What do major templates look like at each breakpoint? What do the header and footer look like? What content appears on the homepage, various section fronts, and article page? What’s the overall look and feel? ”

“ la sécurité est un processus, pas un produit, et rien n’est pire qu’un faux sentiment de sécurité engendré par une accumulation de “trucs” ou parce qu’on a acheté tel ou tel “produit” ou logiciel de sécurité. ”

“ April 19, 1955 Dear Mr. Calt: On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see: 1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home. 2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years. 3. I am helpless without research material—and the more motivational the better. 4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client. 5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform. 6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines. 7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.) 8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts. 9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy. 10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush. 11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.) 12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose. Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility. Yours sincerely, D.O. ”