I read the new book "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow yesterday (it's a short book and if you're comfortable with the differences between "the Universe," "the visible Universe," and "the Metaverse" it's easy-enough going). The book is getting a lot of press for its repeated assertion …

The number of 7-bullet-per-slide PowerPoint presentations seems to be declining, but "Steal This Presentation" is a useful source of advice. On the other hand, if you're presenting to developers, please don't hesitate to have the occasionally semantically-precise slide.

The worst thing about developing for the Mac or iOS is Objective C. Obj-C was a heck of a good experiment 20 years ago, but it's just not a good fit for today's mainstream programming mindset. In the wake of Apple's relenting on the use of 3rd party language tools …

Saikuro : A Cyclomatic Complexity Analyzer.

Function complexity does not seem to be a great problem in the Ruby world, but tracking cyclomatic complexity is one of those things that can help pinpoint troubled modules.

Big news in the Apple development arena this morning: Apple has relented on the ill-advised license restriction on developing for iPhone / iPad with tools created by 3rd parties. The restrictions were introduced in the Spring, just in time to quash Adobe's launch of a Flash-to-iOS cross-compiler, but caught in the …

The Open Source Analysis of Competing Hypotheses Project

This looks like one of those "one thing well" type of applications: a matrix of hypotheses vs. evidence and the ability to rate the intersection as "Consistent/Inconsistent ...etc..."

Could be useful for keeping a complex collaborative discussion on-track and focused.

8 Reasons I love Ruby - Ignu's House of Software.

Nice post that doesn't dwell on the language, but on the ecosystem.

Ruby Best Practices - Sexp for Rubyists.

Interesting:

Let me show you an example. First, gem install ruby_parser. Then:

::: {.dp-highlighter} require 'ruby_parser'
require 'pp'

pp RubyParser.new.parse(\<\<-EOF)
def plus_five(n)
n + 5
end
EOF :::

require 'ruby_parser'
require 'pp'

pp RubyParser.new.parse(<<-EOF)
def plus_five(n)
  n + 5
end …

I like Mind Mapping -- basically visual outlining with as many interconnections as you like. I don't love Mind Mapping, but I like it well enough to try out software.

Here are two tools for collaborative Mind Mapping that I'm considering using in upcoming talks:

XMind - Mind Mapping and Storming.

Mind …

I discuss Microsoft's new LightSwitch development tool in my latest column for SD Times.