First, care. http://t.co/OkNsHxOf

Making iOS apps is getting easier and easier with each new release of Xcode. However, all the new features and approaches means there are more options to choose from, outdated books and old documentation. Back in my day it was so much harder - that's is true in many respects, but a much higher level…

I spend quite a bit of time writing, and I’d like to briefly share a list of the main tools I use - not just for the writing itself, but to help myself focus, resolve issues, and overcome the occasion

HOWTO: Be more productive Translations: 日本語 | Русский | Беларуская “With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the senti

I was originally going to call this "Undoing the Damage of a Computer Science Education," but that was too link-baity and too extreme. There's real value in a computer science degree. For starters, yo

I read 20 Controversial Programming Opinions , and I found myself nodding "yes, yes get to the good stuff." And then, after "less code is better than more," it was over. It was like reading a list of

I bag on meetings. I bag on meetings because like any nerd I expect the universe to be efficient and orderly and there is no more vile a violation of this sense of orderliness than a room full of peop

Designing a programming system for understanding programs Bret Victor / September 2012 Here's a trick question: How do we get people to understand programming? Khan Academy recently launched an online

Here’s what I found, that freaked me out, when discussing iPhone apps with web publications. Yes, they always wanted a splash screen instead of the standard screenshot of the interface. That’s not gre

I’d love to run, edit, and write for a publication bigger than just me and my blog. I don’t have time, so I won’t, at least not any time soon. But if I were to run a publication, I’d have a few rules:

I made the mistake of going to a website today. It’s understandable, of course — everybody does it, from time to time — and I’m sure I’ll forgive myself, eventually. I don’t mean just any website, of

I’ve previously written at some length about the evils of religion , but they pale against a far greater, more pernicious, more widespread blight on society. Religion itself, as always, continues to s

Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . January 2012 There are great startup ideas lying around unexploited right underour noses. One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schl

For a word that can so vastly change the fortunes of a company, it’s worth noting that no generally accepted definition of the word design exists. This means when your boss stands up in front of the t

This is the third installment of my must have must have list of tools and utilities as a Mac and iOS developer. A lot can change in twelve months when you work in the technology space. The biggest change for developers in the past twelve months is the completed transition from Xcode 3 to 4 and from…

I experimented with custom fonts in Instapaper last year, but my efforts fizzled out. Before iOS 5, rendering custom fonts in a UIWebView on iOS was extremely buggy and slow. And nearly all of my lice

My Job Interview With Apple http://t.co/mKwO5Yj3

I announced Basil three weeks ago, and the response has been terrific. People seem to “get it”—a no-nonsense application that makes cooking easier. It’s incredibly gratifying to hear from customers th

For most of my life, I’ve struggled to quantify what constitutes an enticing interface. There are certain basic aims from which you can take your pick - intuitiveness, attractiveness, clarity, simplic

This list was last updated in March 2015 . Why are updates to my reading list so rare? Because computers change a lot in 10 years, but people don't. To make better software, you need to understand how

Back in the early 90s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third largest software company, but, more importantly, it was a le

When Apple shipped the original iPhone back in 2007, Steve Jobs famously said the company was offering a “sweet” solution for developers: web apps. The original iPhone didn’t have the App Store, but instead a web page on Apple.com that listed the most popular web apps tailored for the iPhone. Being…

I believe there's a healthy balance all programmers need to establish, somewhere between … Locking yourself away in a private office and having an intimate dialog with a compiler about your program. G

Some say it's jargon, some say it's not even a real job. What exactly is this thing so many call "User Experience Design"? This may sound like an odd thing for a guy with User Experience Designer on his resumé to question. First, that title was given to me. Second, it's semantic. It gets the job…

Over the past few years I have been asked by many new and established bloggers what the secret is to blogging successfully. In fact, I’ve been asked so many times that I started thinking about it quit