Nick and Megan visited Sydney for Christmas. →

The biggest lesson of the information age is that all media is to be taken with a critical eye, and that no information is valuable until you also understand its source. (One reason for the success of blogs: the information and the source are intimately related, so you always know where you are.) →

This year, the Atlassian Christmas party was held on a boat. As is traditional at these events, quite a lot of alcohol was consumed, and we found an outlet for our competitive streaks by shooting infra-red guns at flying reflective plastic targets. →

Having two otherwise equivalent ways to perform the same operation is bad user-interface design, and it's bad library interface design, because the existence of the synonyms actually adds to the cognitive load of the person trying to use the interface. →

Ideally, I'd hire the great Python programmer and have them pair-program with a competent Java developer. The Java developer could provide expertise on concrete things like the minutiae of the Collections classes, and the probably-frequent-at-first "no, in Java you do it this way", moments. The Python nerd could chip in with "what about this case?" and "why don't you do it this way?", and the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. →

Happy birthday to me. →

When an engineer says something is “non-trivial,” it’s the equivalent of an airline pilot calmly telling you that you might encounter “just a bit of turbulence” as he flies you into a cat 5 hurricane. →