Overheard from a colleague...

"What we need is a detailed design document of our system"

I've been making noises about how we should be writing documentation for at least the last 15 months. This particular colleague always flys off the handle at the merest suggestion that he should document his code. He's responsible for a large part of the system (indeed, the entire component) he's now complaining about.

I suspect that if I nagged him about documentation, he'd flip, as usual. I despair, sometimes.

Cause. Effect. LEARN! Is it really that hard, just because cause and effect are six months apart? Apparently so, judging by the number of "professional" programmers who churn out code all day without bothering at any point to write down what it does...

it's been kinda quiet round here

Life has been getting me down a bit (though I'm feeling better on that front now). Work is driving me round the bend. So I've been having an attack of "Oh, what's the point?"

That, and SimCity 4 is eating my free time like a very hungry thing. Parental visit this weekend too, so I'm unlikely to be seen much until Monday in any case...

What's the capacity of an iPod?

300 songs (and the Human Genome).

[news? not really, when you think about it. amusing? yeah.]

[Link: BoingBoing]

XHTML2

A couple of weeks back, Mark Pilgrim wrote a rant about the XHTML2 spec that caused a few ripples in the web design world, not least because several web design gurus sympathised with his position. Several people have produced responses which accuse him of throwing a self-centred tantrum. Thankfully, Mark has now calmed down a bit, but some of his criticisms are still valid.

Now, Jeffrey Zeldman has posted his thoughts, which I broadly agree with. In short, there's enough elitism in the web/tech world already (I'm guilty here, too¹) and we shouldn't be adding to it. This kind of thing just fuels the frothing-at-the-mouth "W3C are a bunch of ivory-tower academics who don't understand web design" crowd.

There's no point using a technology just becuase it's there. CSS is worth using because (done right) it vastly reduces the workload involved in creating and maintaining sites, not because it's "the done thing"

¹But Netscape 4.x still needs to die.