Entries from September 2007:

This is another good article by Greg Jorgensen. I’ve fallen into some of these patterns as an interviewer, and I’ve encountered others when interviewing for jobs and internships in the last year. Recognizing them is the first step to avoiding them in the future!

I personally love working with relational databases, but I see a lot of programmers that have a knee-jerk reaction to databases, and it always bothers me. This article by Greg Jorgensen does an excellent job in laying out some specific complaints in an organized and non-judgmental manner. It really helps one understand where those developers are coming from, so that you can start thinking about what your organization can do to address these problems.

Our communications coach mines Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone to offer five lessons for making an unforgettable pitch

Question: How do multicore processors affect the performance of JavaScript?

If you have 32 cores, 4 of them will be running virus scanning software, 15 of them will be running AOL background processes, 3 will be running the google toolbar spyware, 8 will be running viruses, 1 will be trying to be the graphics processor which the manufacturer left off because ‘with this many cores you don’t need it’ and the last processor will be trying to run your bloated javascript. 

– “Scott,” from a message on the Joel on Software discussion forum

My sister and her new fiancé — they got engaged in July!

(via Paul K. Graham)