Great blog post about the 4 stages of a programmer’s competence and levels they can achieve. Take a look at the site too, it’s really beautifully designed.
Here’s a sample of the post:
One of the basic pillars of the study of human psychology is the analysis of the subconscious and conscious mind. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to clearly identify and characterize the ‘areas’ where our psychic energy flows. During the first part of his notable life he stated that these were the ’subconscious’, ‘preconscious’ and ‘conscious’ mind.
If we wanted to get an idea of how each of them is involved in our ideas, feelings, thoughts, decisions and motivation (which are key in our daily and professional lives), we should picture ourselves as an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg, the only part we see from the surface, is the conscious mind. It’s logical, organized, and we can control it, but still small. The vast and voluminous underlying mass is the unconscious mind. It’s disorganized, illogical, irrational, but defining in how we act.
Modern psychology has attempted to classify how good we are at a certain skill by observing how deep it perforates that iceberg. It thus describes four stages of competence an individual can achieve. In this article I’ll try to apply this simple scheme to the skill we practice everyday: programming.
One of the lesser-known aspects of Gmail Labs’ useful Canned Responses feature is that it’s available as a filter action. This means you can auto-reply to messages that match criteria you set up with a canned response. For example, you can say that any message from Aunt Bertha with “Fwd” in the subject line should automatically get the response: “I love you Aunt Bertha, but please stop forwarding me chain letters.”
Great article about web fonts, found a new respect for them :) I’ll summarize here:
The first 6 bits of fonts on this list are considered “web-safe” – they’re supported by all major browsers on any platform. The fonts in the following 2 bits come pre-installed on most but not all systems. The fonts in the last 8 bits are mainly used for decorative purposes, and implemented on the Web as sIFR or saved as images.
1. Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, Arial 2. Verdana 3. Georgia 4. Trebuchet MS 5. Century Gothic 6. Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande 7. Palatino 8. Garamond, Baskerville, Caslon 9. Univers Condensed, Linotype Univers 10. Myriad Pro 11. Rockwell 12. Warnock Pro 13. FF DIN 14. Gotham 15. Frutiger 16. Dax Regular
Apple just presented the blueprint for the iPhone OS 3.0, the next version of the best mobile platform to date. So there are some interesting features as well as an updated development kit for the iPhone Developer Program. Some of the 100 new features include:
Search everything on your iPhone using “spotlight”
Cut, copy, and paste <--- whoa (its easy as double tap)
Undo and Redo (by shaking)
Send more than 1 photo at a time using copy and paste (yessss)
Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS
Read and compose email and text messages in landscape
Login to your youtube accounts
Notes sync
Shake to shuffle
Stereo bluetooth
Languages
Some stats:
iPhone is in over 80 countries
25000 apps in the store
800 million app downloads
Current Developers business deals
Developers pick the price
70% of revenues goes straight to developers
No credit card fees
Developers are paid monthly
New additional features for developers
“In-App-Purchase”
Subscriptions from within the app
Additional game levels that can be bought within the app
New types of content can be purchased within the app
“Peer-to-peer”
Automatic discovery of apps in the area
Bluetooth connection
No pairing
“Accessories”
Accessories developers can build customer apps to talk to the accessories (they want to use iPhones for medical devices “they present a blood pressure guage that connects with the iphone)
iPhones can talk to the accessories over the dock connector and wirelessly over bluetooth
Custom protocols can be created
“maps”
Embed the iPhone google map controls into applications (maps API is open)
Pan and zoom
Custom annotations
Current location
Geocoding
Turn by turn directions (3G, wi-fi, cell phone towers)
“push notification”
Apple push notification server is always connected to the server so your app server can talk to the iphone at any time
Update alerts
Sound alerts
Text alerts
Preserves battery life
Maintains performance
Optimized for mobile networks
Scaleable
“there are more than a 1000 APIs coming… here are some…
In app emails
Proximity sensor
iPod library access
Streaming audio
Shake API
In game/ voice chatting
Some apps in the works
Meebo is coming
Electronic Arts Sims3 is coming
Oracles Mobile Sales assistant is coming
ESPN alerts is coming (with streaming video)
LifeScan diabeties management and glucous monitoring is coming (anita matthew)
ngmoco:) a virtual pet with a build in social networking capability is coming
ngmoco:) a first person shooter where you can play with friends and purchase weapons is coming
Smule, leaft rumbone a game to teach you how to play a musical performance is coming
