The Insider News

Diary Of A Ninja[^]:

You’re close to shipping and you receive a shopping list of bugs and changes. Some are tiny and un-eventful, some are show stoppers, some let the bad guys in, and some are simply scope creep trying to sneak through the door. It’s hard to know where to start without reclassifying them because the majority of them are all labelled Critical. It’s time to sit down with whoever documented your bugs and do some talking…

Scott Hanselman[^]:

I use a number of text editors. The three I have pinned to my taskbar are Visual Studio, Sublime Text 2, and Notepad 2. I have three because I like features from one and wish those features were in another. Sublime Text (and a few other editors) has a great feature called Simultaneous Editing. It's the very definition of an advanced - but core - editor feature. Enter the MultiEdit extension for Visual Studio. Holding down ALT while mouse-clicking in the editor will add multiple selection points, so when you type, text will be added to all the selected positions.

Aaronontheweb[^]:

Most developers stagnate both intellectually and productively after 4-5 years in industry; they adopt some tools, pick up some patterns, learn a language or two, and maybe they’re even able to work at a successful company and contribute to some important products. Great! But what happens when you hand a developer a blank sheet of paper and the opportunity for them to own a product? Most of the time: chaos and failure.

John Resig[^]:

How do you store sensitive configuration options (such as usernames, passwords, etc.) in source control? Typically what I’ve done is to just punt on the problem entirely. I create a dummy configuration file, such as conf/sample-settings.json which has the basic structure but none of the details filled out.... The technique I picked up from Craig was to, instead, keep an encrypted version of the configuration file in source control and then provide a means through which the user can encrypt and decrypt that data.

YouTube[^]:

Kent Beck and Erich Gamma changed software development forever when they created JUnit. Programmers embraced JUnit and the philosophy behind it. There are now xUnit-style frameworks in just about any language a programmer might need to use today. The simple but powerful conventions introduced by JUnit are now accepted standards for how test frameworks work. In this interview, Kent Beck tells the creation story for JUnit.

doxsey.net[^]:

One of my favorite parts about Go is its unwavering focus on utility. Sometimes we place so much emphasis on language design that we forget all the other things programming involves.... I want to focus on one that's not generally well known: Go can seamlessly use functions written in Assembly.

Learning by Shipping[^]:

Want to get developers fired up? Kick off a debate about development methodologies – waterfall, agile, lean, extreme, spiral, unified, etc. At any given time it seems one method is the right one to use and the other methods, regardless of previous experience, are wrong. Some talk about having a toolbox of methods to draw on. Others say everyone must adapt to a new state of the art at each generation. Is there a practical way to build good software without first having this debate?

NPD.com[^]:

Content that was once primarily accessed by consumers on their PCs, is shifting to mobile devices.... The top two activities that consumers are shifting from their PCs to their tablets and smartphones are web browsing and Facebook. Among tablet owners, 27 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing the Internet and 20 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing Facebook.

IGN[^]:

This decision supposedly came right from the top of the company, with Bill Gates himself even chipping in. Despite initial reservations, Kempin claims that Gates always had qualms that the living room computer would, at some stage, metamorphosise into an alternative PC that could threaten Microsoft's dominance of the traditional market. As a result, it was eventually felt the company had to try and tackle Sony head-on. While with hindsight we can see this worked out for the best, a huge amount of teething issues were encountered along the way.

Reality Prose[^]:

LEGO sets are not cheap toys. They are made to the highest standards and have the price to go along with it. However, in the past couple decades it seems that the price of LEGO sets has become outrageous. New sets can sell for up to $500 retail and old sets can sell for twice that in a secondary market. This is a children’s toy, right? There is no way LEGO sets have always been this expensive; it is just molded plastic. Let’s take a look at the history of LEGO pricing and try to figure out what is going on.

Article:

If governments don’t come round, though, Silent Circle’s solution is simple: The team will close up shop and move to a jurisdiction that won’t try to force them to comply with surveillance.