Ch-ch-ch-changes

This morning my colleague and I were discussing some code he had recently committed. Since we are both working on intertwined projects, I found myself stepping over (and into) his code, and when I noticed his "style" of doing things differed slightly from mine, I called him on it.

In the end, he made some changes, and I made some changes, and the topic of what to do about legacy inconsistencies came up, and he offered up this gem:

My philosophy is:
1) Change what you do in the future first.
2) If time permits, and the change is easy, change code at or near code that you're already working on next.
3) If you're dying of boredom, change old (unused?) code that's not being worked on.

I can agree with that. It's essentially what I already do, but seeing it in writing made it somehow more officious. It's department policy material if I ever saw some.

"If it ain't broke" (an Eclipse story)

Here's a little anecdote in relation to one of my old rants, heavily edited to clean up the vulgar language and abyssal spelling and grammar mistakes I sometimes make over instant messaging...

Kanook, "I get a warm fuzzy feeling every time Eclipse correctly guesses which variables to use as parameters when AutoCompleting a method call."

Trak3r, "Yeah Eclipse is the bomb; I am SO glad we switched."

Kanook, "I suggest a new credo: If it ain't broke, you probably don't know how broke it really is."

I have to admit, he makes a good point.

SpaceShipOne captures X Prize

They did it! They actually did it. They spent $30m to win a $10m prize, but an amazing precedent has been set. A small team of eccentrics with incredible talent and a tight budget proved that space exploration doesn't require a million-man agency with a trillion dollar budget.

This parable translates to the software industry as well. The similarity to my current situation is almost comical. My current company (small, cheap, and successful) compared to my last company (big, expensive, stagnant) is night and day. Companies can grow so big and so bureaucratic that they can no longer get anything done. Sometimes it takes a small, talented, ambitious, and focused team to shake things up a little.

Firefox vs. Slashdot

For the love of all things holy, somebody please fix something!

I switched to Firefox a while back. The details of my trials and tribulations are in my personal blog. The one debacle I was unable to overcome is how hideously Firefox renders the Slashdot site!

Then last week my partner in crime sends me this thread letting me know that I'm not the only person suffering this great injustice.

Woe is me. I'm not going to join the debate as to which party is in error, I just pray that one of them would step up and take some initiative! Sigh.

The two reasons I haven't switched to Gmail

Yahoo! Mail Plus still has two features that I require from a web-based e-mail interface that Gmail hasn't provided:

1. From: Spoofing -- I can send mail from my Yahoo! account and the recipient will see it as "From:" my business account. Gmail only allows you to specify a different "Reply-To:" address, which isn't the same thing.

2. Check Other Mail -- I can "harvest" e-mail from several other POP3 accounts into my Yahoo! Mail and respond to them through Yahoo! and (referring to the prior point) have them appear as if they came "From:" the respective accounts.
   

If Gmail ever adds this functionality, I'll switch in a heartbeat.