Why simplicity starts with design
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Four top tips I was talking with a fellow IT professional recently who was saying that you should "program simply" but "design with complexity". I do understand the point that he was trying to make - that is, during the design stage take into account the problems in your domain so that these have been worked out as much as possible before the coding starts.â¦
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From TVs to burners, gadgets and mobile prototypes, everything shows a clean yet pragmatic design.
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On his blog, Nick Halstead shares a few tips he's worked up to help developers that might be having a hard time with coding issues - a few steps towards solving programming problems.   Early on in most people's programming careers problem solving is a large part of your day to day job. As you become more experienced you find that many programming patterns that you have used before can be reapplied. You then start working on larger and larger projects and the problems tend to be more about solving architectural problems rather than logic related ones.   Included in his list are things like "Talking it through", "Brainstorming", "Breaking it down" and "Research". This last one can be one of the most important and can save tons of time in the long run. With tools like Google and other sites, there's no reason to check before you start a project to see if there's someone out there that might have already done it (and it might be more well developed).
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In a post from Nick Halstead on the Programming and Management Blog, he discusses something just about every developer is familiar with - pseudo code.   Writing pseudo code and program code separately simplifies the overall task by splitting it into two simpler tasks. While writing the algorithm the developer can focus on solving the problem, not how it is written in a a particular language. Once the pseudo code is written and has been checked; writing the real code becomes much simpler, the programmer is only concerned with converting the pseudo code into the appropriate program code.   Nick looks at both sides of its use and includes the good (doesn't take language-specific understanding) and the bad (could hide logic flaws that could be tragic later). He also includes a quick overview of how to write it, making sure to keep things high level and all about the structure.
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On the SitePoint PHP blog today, Troels Knak-Nielsen has written up an article that talks about dependencies in your applications - those little interconnections your code relies on to do more with less.   In lack of better words, I'll call this compositional programming style. It's a style which is usually more prevalent with experienced programmers. [...] There is, however, a dark side to composition - dependencies.   He starts with a definition to bring everyone up to a level field then moves on to how their used (through a "global symbol" or directly passed in) and how they can "leak" if you're not careful.    To help protect you and your code from any kind of damage down the line, Troels suggests making a container to keep objects where they need to be. He even includes an example with namespace support to make things even easier down the road.
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Did you think notebooks were all about components?  Think again.  The notebook market now has everything to do with design.
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Psychotherapy for UI design Editor's blog Here are some thoughts on user-interface design and the simple psychology of rooking the user. Try this for an example: I have been staying at a hotel where there is Wi-Fi available in the form of a T-Mobile hotspot. Letâs not go to the length of criticising the hotel for not fronting this service itself, putting the cost on the bill, etc â or indeed, just burying the cost in the hotel charges so it appears free. What it does mean, however, is that one has to go through T-Mobileâs SignUpWithYourCreditCard process... tedious but survivable.â¦
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A discussion of how to use frame styles in OOo Writer.
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Good software designers get out of their bodies and become users of software. Because ultimately you don't design software to express yourself, you design it to be useful. The point of news, as with software, is to be useful to the person using it. Sorry, it's not about employing editors. Scott Rosenberg, a writer and editor of news can be forgiven for seeing it from his own point of view, but we users of news don't share that point of view. To me, as a software designer, it's no surprise that there are lots of ways to view news. That there used to be one main way to do it is also not a surprise, there were technical limits, that aren't there anymore.  The skill of laying out a paper presentation of the day's news on a big sheet of paper is now an obsolete craft. The only reason we needed people to do that in the past was that was the only way to get written news to massive numbers of users of written news. Now that computer monitors are cheap, and we have little computers that can get us news that fits in our pocket, we can try out lots of ways of arranging it, and maybe we'll even discover something new.
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Complexity gets complicated Simplicity in software is, I believe, more than just a noble aim; it is essential for successful software projects. However, simplicity should not be assumed just because one particular technology or methodology is being used.â¦
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The World Wide Web is no longer a novelty. To many companies and organizations, the Web is a necessity, the foundation of their businesses. This week you'll discover the thinking behind customer-centered design and learn how to apply it to your projects. By Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong. 0111
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Can digital musicians, artists and other media creators free themselves from the tyranny of popular software design? Commentary by Momus.
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In this post on the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans takes a look at an article published in a recent php|architect issue from Chris Hartjes about how several recent advancements in the PHP community have helped developers think more in "the Rails way" of development.   Chris does a good job of laying out his points. As with any article of this nature, you are going to agree with some of them and you'll disagree with some of them. However, to get to that point you'll have to consider all of them. That's really the point of the article; making developer sit back and think for a minute. It's well worth the read.   Cal also mentions some of the topics presented in the article including more conceptual ideas like "Convention Over Configuration" and "Rapid Should Mean Rapid".
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Nature is pretty good at solving engineering problems, so designers are increasingly turning to biomimetics to improve their products and ideas. By Rowan Hooper.
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Tired of Apple's elegant, understated product design? A host of companies banish the bland with custom designs for iPhones, iPods, MacBooks and other products. Commentary by Leander Kahney.
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Designers played it safe at New York Fashion Week, with simple, easy pieces. But achieving simplicity in fashion is one of the toughest things to do
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Krystian Hoffman has posted to his blog today a few reasons (10 to be exact) that he likes and uses PHP. Fortunately, most of them are some of the best reasons for anyone to use the language.   ended up with ten points on why I use PHP and I guess this would be a good post here on my blog, as it seems people like lists in general and maybe I could get some people out there that aren't really sure about whether PHP is good or bad, to get some insight at least.  Here's some of his list:   The PHP Community The (language's) Performance Its Portability It has strong Object-oriented support   Other things got a mention as well - the low learning curve, low cost, included libraries - but the above few seemed the strongest.