2025.01.04.

I Live My Life a Quarter Century at a Time

Interesting story from James Thomson about the development of the early version of the Mac OS X Dock.

So, we are coming up on a little anniversary for me this weekend. On the 5th of January 2000, Steve Jobs unveiled the new Aqua user interface of Mac OS X to the world at Macworld Expo.

By the way, my birthday is January 5th too.

On the other hand, I got a little bit angry when reading this part (especially how Space Karen talks crap about remote work lately).

Steve left, and then visited my manager’s manager’s manager and said the fateful words (as reported to me by people who were in the room where it happened).

“It has come to my attention that the engineer working on the Dock is in FUCKING IRELAND”.

I was told that I had to move to Cupertino. Immediately. Or else.

I did not wish to move to the States. I liked being in Europe. Ultimately, after much consideration, many late night conversations with my wife, and even buying a guide to moving, I said no.

They said ok then. We’ll just tell Steve you did move.

As a software developer who has been working remotely for more than 15 years, I have never understood why it’s so important to be in the office…

2023.03.14.

How to Plan Anything by Email Alone — and why it’s Faster – Just Use Email

Interesting article about how we can use emails to collaborate on projects:

For something temporal, and for groups of eight people or less, I believe email is superior for planning. Pretty Trello boards may look like you’ve got your act together, but you still have to type it out, get others to agree, and not forget important details. Trello can’t help you think. Even though software like Trello is quite easy, that doesn’t mean its universally understood the way email is. The documentation for Trello still must be read and understood.

I’m one of those people who like to communicate over email because it’s quick, and you can organize your end in any way you want.

The problem with a planning approach like this is that some people can’t use email appropriately. They create new messages when they should reply; they forget to answer questions etc. It happens on other platforms too. Usually, they are terrible with planning in general. So people blame email for being old and unusable.

Nowadays, a lot of people are in love with Slack.

Let me tell you a secret: it is even worse for work-related communication and project management in any possible way because it is closed, everyone has to use the same horrible client, and people expect instant communication from it (and don’t get me started on people who want everyone to use the status field as team Twitter).

People who couldn’t manage their emails started to blame it, which made companies switch to Slack, where these people are still the bottlenecks in the process, but now everyone has to use the same crappy client.