Read two blog posts yesterday that I thought I’d mention.
Code’s Worst Enemy (Stevey’s Blog Rants): A monster of a rant (5222 words!), mainly talking about Java code’s natural tendency to be bloated and that programmers should strive for brevity of code. Apparently Steve’s been coding a game in Java for a hobby, and the code base got huge and unmanageable. Now he’s thinking of converting the game to Rhino (Javascript running on the JVM) partly because of Javascript’s immense expressive power, something that I’ve been ranting about for quite some time now. Can’t wait for Rhino on Rails!
Bootstrap Design for Geek Powered Startups: Not a regular reader of Tony’s … stumbled on the post from del.icio.us. He’s basically highlighting factors to think about when making your own startup. Although everything that he highlights is true, two of his suggestion
“a UI designer should be baked into your organization as early as possible”
and
“usability testing should be baked into your organization from day one”
are really important because startups usually don’t pay much attention to them.
Although I think UI designers are very rare in Pakistan, I still think that in house training can go a long way in making a ‘graphics designer’ into a ‘Web UI designer’. First of course, we have to get rid of the misconception that both are one and the same, a belief that’s practically ubiquitous in Pakistan.
Sadly, I don’t see Usability Testing happening anytime soon in our industry. If there’s any ISV or startup out there that does work in Usability, and you’re in Pakistan, speak up!
