crew dataviz. be still my heart.
8 hours ago
May 21, 20138 hours ago
May 21, 2013
dear david karp,
thanks for tumblr, a platform i have grown to love over the 6 years that i’ve been here.
i understand this is your project and i’ll understand if you sell it. but i wanted to point out, you left money on the table when it came to me.
i’d have paid a small fee to have a “no-ads” dashboard. you could have added all the ads you wanted ($$) and i’d have given you money ($$) to have them not show up for me. money in your pocket both ways.
i also would have paid a small fee for premium features ($$). all that time wasted on trying to get me to not use ‘missing e’ could have been put to better use asking me to pay a small fee ($$) for a better user experience within tumblr itself.
there are several other ways you missed making some solid dough on a tumblr fan such as myself, but i think the point is made.
you left money on the table with me. i hope you don’t do that with yahoo, or whomever you may sell to.
tumblr is a neat place. you did something really great in creating this software. however, we did something great in being the community that used it. you made tumblr worth something, and we’ve made it worth more.
i am not sure i can handle delicious finally and utterly turning to junk, google reader disappearing and the yahooification of tumblr.
1 day ago
May 20, 2013
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1 day ago
May 20, 2013
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The second requirement is a high tolerance for failure. Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code. In the words of the great John Backus, inventor of the Fortran programming language: “You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.
—
How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ - NYTimes.com (via rafaelfajardo)
or, as Michel Foucault would have it:
“As to those for whom to work hard, to begin and begin again, to attempt and be mistaken, to go back and rework everything from top to bottom, and still find reason to hesitate from one step to the next—as to those, in short, for whom to work in the midst of uncertainty and apprehension is tantamount to failure, all I can say is that clearly we are not from the same planet.”
(via shrinkrants)
i seem to have developed a certain reputation for breaking things. often. and without worry. but i don’t know how you can do this job well without breaking things often and without worry. if you haven’t broken it, you haven’t learned anything. and where’s the fun in that?
although there is a difference between properly breaking the thing and simply identifying the brokenness of the thing. and between the thing running without error and the thing running correctly.
1 day ago
May 20, 2013
reblogged via
I typically refer to the IAC sale as “the worst business decision of my life.” I’m not sure IAC is worse than any other large company in this regard. An entrepreneur is someone who, almost artistically, designs a living entity which embodies the values, beliefs, and ambitions of the creator. It’s impossible for a larger entity to swallow a smaller one without completely reshaping it. When this process begins, a wild visionary – the entrepreneur type – is the most toxic, indigestible actor imaginable. And this is why I roll my eyes when a new acquisition is announced: Because I don’t see it as a triumphant graduation but a sacrifice to an industry that is afraid to dream big.
— Jake Lodwick, An acquisition is always a failure (via soupsoup)
1 day ago
May 20, 2013
reblogged via
In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from them. This way, you get the benefit of everybody else’s experience, and not just your own idiosyncratic path through the space of mistakes.
1 day ago
May 20, 2013
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The perfect balance is committing to only those crafts that you can perform with satisfaction even if you have to do so in utter obscurity. Then, put your work out in public as part of the process itself—if you’re making homebrew beer or an Arduino hack, make a video or write about the process as a means to think harder about the details of it. If you’re a writer, think of putting it online as simply having the work backed up in one more place. In this way, you open yourself up to the spectrum of possibilities, ranging from utter obscurity at one end to global fame at the other. Far more likely is something closer to the obscurity end but much more satisfying—that you will draw the attention of a relative few who share your interests.
1 day ago
May 20, 2013
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