Quality Programmers Over Quantity

Don't you hate it when you tear off the skin from an old wound? I took a nasty fall on my knees about a month ago and one healed while the other went into an odd state. Now, a part of Elton is on my car door's speaker. Anyway, I'm running late tonight because I saw the Astros slaughter the Phillies 7-1. I didn't want to go originally, but seeing the four homeruns was damn cool. Anyone else think baseball is a little too long? What I'm really here to talk about though is a new post from Joel Splosky about why it's more important to have the best programmers than an army of mediocre ones. I think people all too often see programmers as machines who don't really expend much more effort than another programmer, but our brains work differently and some are just better at it than others. Just because you throw more manpower on a project doesn't mean it'll do better because with so many people involved it could convolute the code and end up taking even longer. It's better to keep it with a smaller team of badasses. I hope to be one of those coders one day.

Since you're so used to hearing about Microsoft in the tech news I'm obligated to mention that their Virtual Earth application has left out the Apple campus, but I think it's just an old satellite image since they also still have the twin towers. In more important news, Yahoo is taking over Konfabulator and making it totally free in the process! This is definitely a good thing as they'll want to foster the development of more widgets and a richer API, and even Mac users will benefit from it so I applaud Yahoo for the move. If you'd like an easy way to chronicle your life then you should look into a study at MIT that gave its subject cell phones that could act as a life diary tracking their phone usage and sleep schedules and such. They ended up with a ton of data and possibly something that may someday become a mainstream product. Another thing that may become big someday is ads in video games, and one company is launching full motion ads in a sci-fi game called Anarchy Online. This could either be the start of a revolution or a flop. If you're interested in video blogs you should read this article at the New York Times, which is pretty short and relatively cool. Lastly, take a look at the world's smallest mp3 player, the mobiBLU DAH-1500. It sounds like it's pretty decent given its size.



I'm about ready to go to bed so I won't dawdle with the movie news, and I'll start with some video footage. Sky High is a movie I haven't talked much about but I think it has potential to be the first decent kids' movie in a while and now you can see the first 10 minutes over at Movies.com. If you're more interested in a grown-up movie though, IGN has the first four minutes of this coming weekend's new action movie, Stealth. I didn't watch all of either footage, but from what I saw it looked like Sky High will be a little better. Yahoo! Movies has a new clip from Four Brothers that may tickle your fancy more and I still think of it as a movie to keep in the back of your head. I know we don't have much Transformers footage to go off of so far, but at least we have an interview with Spielberg to show how into it he really is. I think I might be a little more intrigued in his newly named upcoming film Munich. Anyway, it's more than we have for Southland Tales, but more cunning fans would have found out that the storyboard is actually online at an appropriate URL. There's also a strange website up for Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in the movie, and I consider the poem there a must-read. Mel Gibson is trying to make another movie in a foreign language, but this time it's called Apocalypto and is entirely in Mayan. I somehow don't see how it will compete against Lady in the Water like Disney wants it to. Lastly, I just had to mention the cute pictures that IGN has from March of the Penguins.



Now for some Monday Madness:

1. What kind of storm is the most scary to you?
An electrical storm sounds scariest, but the scariest one I've experienced is probably a tropical storm.

2. In your opinion, what is the perfect outdoor temperature?
In the mid to low 70s I would think. I think that some nights in Austin in the fall are that nice, but it's unfortunately not part of our usual weather pattern down here so I couldn't give an exact temperature.

3. Would you rather experience thunderstorms or snowstorms?
My instinct is to say snowstorm since it doesn't snow here, but I know that it causes more road trouble so I'd have to say thunderstorm.

4. Share a weather-related experience with us...feel free to include pictures!
I got trapped in a bus for a few hours during a bad Houston flood my senior year of high school. It was sadly also the bus driver's birthday! It was a pretty scary experience, but it was nice to see Houstonians coming together. My dad was stranded trying to get home from work and someone who lived on that street passed out water bottles and snacks to the tired drivers. Now that's a dude who's going straight to Heaven.