Blogs
Rallying to the "Agile" Cause
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-17
When it comes to the quasi-religious subject of development methods, I try to avoid sectarian violence. I like to think of programming languages, for example, in the same way that I think of wrenches: the all-purpose variety tend to do a wide range of jobs with only mediocre success --
This Medium is Extreme
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-17
A day without a new blog entry is a failure to live up to the promise. This medium demands the feel of a conversation, not of a chess game by snail mail -- and the WiFi laptop, combined with the public hot spot, is therefore the defining tool of the
If it ain't broke, don't break it
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-12
Boy, it's got to feel bad when you destroy a perfectly good working spacecraft with a dumb bug in a software upgrade. Hippocratic sentiments like "First, do no harm" certainly do come to mind.
The prospect of sitting at a machine for 'way too much time, installing expensive software only
Default, Dear Brutus, Is in Ourselves
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-05
Reading through the updates on the latest PDF-related security flaw, I found one key observation about the pathway to exploits with full access to local file systems. Quoting CTO Jeremiah Grossman at White Hat Security, a CNET story noted that For an attack to work, a malicious link has to
Now Do They Have Your Attention?
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-05
With admirable timing that buried the news in the heart of the pre-Christmas rush, not to mention burying it further in paragraph 5 of a presidential signing statement, the White House on Dec. 20 declared
... Read More
... Read More
Programmer Myths and Realities
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-03
When I saw a Reuters article about David Platt's new book, Why Software Sucks, I thought it sounded familiar. Then I realized that I'd gotten a reviewer copy of that book a few weeks ago, but had put it aside because it didn't have an animal on the cover. That
Finding the Real 25th Killer
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-03
So far as I can tell, just about nobody recognized the joker in the deck when I put dBase Mac on my list of 25 killer applications of all time -- even though I took pains to say, "in the homicidal sense." Many Web sites merely posted the list of
Hands-Off Mustn't Be Brains-Off
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2007-01-03
My engineering education was significantly shaped by my MIT faculty advisor, John Biggs, who thought it would be a good use of my time to take core courses in other departments whenever my degree program left some room for "free electives." Instead of taking a class in Cinema of Classical
The Geek Shift
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-22
If you're reading this post between the time it's made and the day after Christmas, you may be on the Geek Shift: you know, the schedule slot that's populated by people who couldn't make the appropriate Bambi Eyes about their need to get home and assemble toys or cook the
Better Not to Receive
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-22
Our Killer Apps list continues to inspire conversation, much of it missing the point that I'm not saying a Killer App is necessarily a good app: only that it appeared at the right time, with the right functionality or appearance thereof, to drive users' platform choices. No more, no less.
But
e-OK
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-21
A reader asked me today if I would comment on "e-OK" -- as a proposed term meaning "electronically OK," perhaps as a sort of parallel to the Project Mercury expression "A-OK."
It's interesting to think of the number of times, in the course of a day, when it might be useful
It's an Ensayo Thing
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-20
Promiscuous use of the label "Web 2.0" is the hallmark of the entrepreneurial developer who's going "ftw" -- "for the win," in Web game parlance.
"Web 2.0" is often spoken in the same breath, as if it were what the Spaniards call the "calidad" (the essential quality) of the interactive model
Web Services and the Kindness of Strangers
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-20
The SOAP API to the Google search engine, an archetype of Web service enablement and the soul of the seminal book "Google Hacks," is apparently on its way to retirement.
Developers whose eyes
... Read More
... Read More
The Black Hats Start Selling Shovels
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-18
When I saw this morning's story on the thriving marketplace in unpatched exploit info, two things came to mind: the famous entrepreneurial strategy of selling shovels, blue jeans and other supplies to
... Read More
... Read More
Top 25 Killer Applications of All Time
By Peter Coffee | Posted: 2006-12-14
Top 25 Killer Apps list awaits your review and comment.
