Marcus's Musings

A few excellent articles shamelessly stolen from Joel Spolsky's "Best Software Essays of 2004" nomination list... my personal pick of the bunch really:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
This document is an excellent guide on how to ask questions intelligently (and thereby receive relevant answers), and I wish that as many people as possible would read it. During the years that I was the "ASP guru" and mentor at SitePoint Forums I became known for occasionally scolding people for not doing their own spadework before posting, so it's reassuring to see that my views on the subject *are* shared by others, and the author (Eric Steven Raymond) puts the case across very eloquently.

Software Copy Protection
When you decide to start selling the fruits of your labours, how to approach the issue of software piracy is something that all developers must face. Here's some excellent guidance on the topic.

Boosting your search engine ranking: it's no trick
If your site's not any good, you might be able to fool the search engines into ranking you, but users will see straight through it. Instead, focus on delivering useful, well-written, navigable, and standards-compliant content.

How Microsoft Lost the API War
I think I've linked to this in the past, but it's an excellent read, so read it again if you haven't already!

Ronco Spray-On Usability
An extremely amusing look at the major usability problems that Linux users experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any particular camp, it's just undeniably funny (and spot-on).

The Secret Source of Google's Power
Interesting insights into the fully-scalable custom supercomputing network that powers Google. On a related note, this is also worth a read.


Also, now that I've taken a step back from coding and have become a business analyst, I've found these articles particularly poignant:

On Reqs And Specs
Requirements and specifications. Nightmare. Enough said.

The 5 Pitfalls of Estimating a Software Project
The title says it all. Ironically, having hated not having sufficient requirements to work from in the past, I'm still in the same position now, but furthermore I have to pass inadequate info on to the developer that now does the coding that I used to. And so the cycle continues... lol

Ten Ways to Kill Design
All 10 sound strangely familiar...