Skip to content

2011

  • 2 min read

Boston Postmortem

We just got back from the monthly meeting of "Boston Postmortem".

Huh, what is that? Well as a result of my teaching at Brandeis this summer - Mobile and Game Software Development - I have developed a greater appreciation for the gaming world. When we had Ed Baraf of Blue Fang games speak to our class, among the many things he taught us was that there's this great meetup in Waltham called the Boston Postmortem.

It was very well attended and the crowd sounded and felt like a community that knew each other and was pretty tight which made for a very interesting and enjoyable meeting.

The term postmortem comes from the fact that apparently this is where speakers come to explain how a project or company went off the rails or actually died. We can all learn from each others' mistakes, right?

Last night it was Scott Macmilan's turn to tell his story:

Last December, Boston area indie studio Macguffin Games closed its doors. In three years, Scott Macmillan took the studio from a one-man shop to a 4-person startup with paid employees, launched two games (one of them for Facebook), and then finally shut the whole thing down with no regrets. At this talk, he’ll discuss the big lessons he learned, what worked and what didn’t, and take lots of questions from the audience.

Here's the link to his presentation: Death of an Indie Game Studio

I also learned that there's a gaming unconference in Boston this august, called the Boston Game Loop. I will be there!

p.s. to my word spelling circle, I learned today that postmortem is one word not two 🙂

p.p.s "indie" seems to mean simply, not corporate, small, often bootstrapped and "game studio" seems to mean simply, company that develops games. For example, are there "indie software development shops" or "indie programmers"?

  • 1 min read

David Brooks: The Mother of All No-Brainers

Another on the mark article by David Brooks: the mother of all no brainers.

I can't help it but I am riveted by this debt ceiling debacle. Like many I want them to stop bickering and reach and agreement. I know there will be parts of it that I hate, but I know that overall I will be thrilled that this particular soap opera/drama/crisis is over, and that our leaders have stopped acting like children:

The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right.

  • 1 min read

I wonder when this will come to iPhone!

This is a very unusual Android app that I came across. It looks like they are just starting so it's a bit crude, but highly intriguing…

"HappyTrack is an Android Application that gives you the chance to express how are you feeling and why. Every time you update your status this app will keep track of the time, place and reasons about your feelings. But that's not all!" (from HappyTrack)

What do you think?

  • 2 min read

Microsoft is to Google as Lotus was to Microsoft

This isn't a huge new insight but it's interesting to see history kind of repeating itself.

Sometimes a product is so locked in and so entrenched that it looks like it will never be beat. After all, no one ever got fired for buying IBM right? And you'd have to be crazy to try to build a new spreadsheet to compete with Excel, because companies large and small have an unbelievable investment in training, familiarity and documents so that any change is extremely hard and costly.

It is said, correctly, I think, that such entrenched software products often get unseated during a platform switch. When a dominant technology platform (e.g. PCs or Windows) is losing it's dominance in favor of a new technology (e.g. Cloud-based apps) the dominant software company and products are vulnerable.

Did you know that Lotus Development had total dominance in spreadsheets on MS-DOS? And then Microsoft Windows 'came along' (that coming along took almost a decade but still Lotus got caught short.

Lotus kept investing in 1-2-3 - the couldn't not - while Microsoft without the 'baggage ' of an installed base could bet on their 'new platform' and build a great new spreadsheet called Excel. It was a gamble, and they won.

Now we might be seeing history repeating itself. In a New York Times Article from a day or three ago:

"Microsoft’s long-awaited move, analysts say, is a studiously crafted bet, including various offerings at different prices. They are not sure whether it represents wishful thinking or a workable strategy. Microsoft’s plan is to embrace the demand for cloud-based tools for office workers, which promise to be less costly for companies than conventional software, and yet avoid cannibalizing a business that is its biggest single money-maker." (from Microsoft Takes to Cloud to Ward Off Competition)

Wow, that sounds like what I heard around Lotus about 15 years ago.

Imagine this: "Lotus ' plan is to embrace the demand for Windows-based tools for office workers,[…] and yet avoid cannibalizing a business that is its biggest single money-maker"

  • 1 min read

Inside Job

It's hard to comprehend people who feel that it is reasonable (let alone ethical, let alone bankers) to get paid on the order of $50 MILLION a year.

You should watch the documentary Inside Job. It's nauseating.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFfTcAcGjcU]

  • 1 min read

[GEEKY] Full Applications that run in the browser

Sproutcore is a JavaScript framework for writing powerful web applications with less code. It looks to me as a way to write a lot more of your application in JavaScript running in the browser. And this involves moving the logic of the application's own logic there.

Sproutcore is a big complicated system that I have not fully investigated. It comes with a good pedigree though and is very nicely documented and designed. Worth a look if you want to have a super responsive browser based app that will continue to work even when the network connection is gone.

Here is their own blurb: "SproutCore applications move business logic to the browser so they can respond to your users' taps and clicks immediately, avoiding an agonizing roundtrip across often intermittent network connections.

As web application users go increasingly mobile, applications can no longer depend on reliable connections to a remote server to do the heavy lifting.

At the same time, web browsers continue to radically improve their ability to quickly process data and deliver polished user interfaces—a perfect opportunity to rethink the architecture of modern web applications."

  • 1 min read

Interesting approach to teaching computer science

Fun article about Ben Hescott who has some unique - and impressive - approaches to teaching an abstract topic:

Q. Did you experience an "aha'' teaching moment?

A. My first time teaching, I was using PowerPoint slides. One student kept saying, "I don't see it.'' So I turned off the computer, grabbed a piece of chalk, and went through the material slowly on the blackboard, without notes. Afterward, the kid said, "You're a really good teacher when you're not using PowerPoint.'' That changed everything." (from The Boston Globe)

You have to read the whole interview!

  • 1 min read

[GEEKY] JavaScript – Universal Language of the Future

JavaScript is the language of the future. Why do I say this?

I love Ruby, I respect Java, and I am jealous of Python. And of course I have a warm spot in my heart for C++. Think about it. JavaScript is unique among all those languages:

  • Any computer you can get your hands on nowadays has a working, and probably very fast JavaScript compiler/interpreter. Laptops, Desktops, Servers, Mac, Pc, Linux, Phone, Tablet. ALL OF THEM. You can't say that of any of the other languages.

  • Because of the browser wars, and probably spurred on by Google and Chrome, there has been enormous investment in JavaScript performance so that it is now respected as a viable high performance language for server side apps.

  • As a language, it's not shabby. Most people don't think about JavaScript as a full fledged programming language, but it does have some great characteristics.

If you don't believe me, here's another person who comes to the same conclusion by a slightly different route:

"Web servers, rich web client libraries, HTML5, databases, even JavaScript- based languages: I see JavaScript everywhere. If you have avoided JavaScript, this is the year to learn it. There's no excuse -- and if you don't, you risk being left behind." (from "Why a JavaScript Hater thinks everyone needs to learn JavaScript in the next year.")

So, go learn JavaScript. You will need it for your next job.

  • 1 min read

Adobe Software Updates To Help Devs Build iOS, PlayBook And Android Apps

As you (don't) know, I am teaching a course at Brandeis University about mobile and game development. So I follow stories about how to more easily create cross platform mobile apps with great interest. Check this post Adobe Software Updates To Help Devs Build iOS, PlayBook And Android Apps from TechCrunch:

Adobe is today pushing updates to its application development software product Flash Builder and the open source Flex framework to enable developers to build apps for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, following support for the Android platform (added last April).