Best Of: A Series
Some of my favourite articles from over the years.
Feeding the Baby
On accidentally becoming a CEO.
A lot of startups with first-time founders have unclear roles. When I started my first business, Steamclock’s co-founder Nigel was far more experienced, being ten years my senior. I’d assumed he would take a more CEO-like role, but other than that I’d put little thought into our positions. We were...
The Curse of Dialup World
An acquisition gets weird.
A long time ago – at the turn of the century, as kids would call it now – my first job was at a dialup internet service provider. Officially, I was hired to be a sort of errand-boy. Instead, the role was more interesting: a front seat for one of...
Do Something, So We Can Change It!
A habit for addressing two-way decisions.
Sometimes teams get stuck on a decision. My favourite trick for getting unstuck comes via Pixar’s Michael B. Johnson. In 25 years there, he helped Pixar build the production workflows they use to make and iterate their stories, and was tasked with helping teams “fail as quickly as possible.” To...
Dungeons & Developers
How to simulate tricky conversations.
You open the door and see three orcs. They’re seated at a fine oaken table watching a glowing rectangle on the west wall, which displays the ominous text “2023 Strategic Planning”. The orcs look up at you, and one says “You’re late.” What do you do? Depending on your perspective...
Giving a Shit as a Service
A mental model for service businesses.
A few years back, my team decided to get a custom meeting room table. In our search for something great, we were referred to a small studio that does great work: East Vancouver’s Union Wood Co. The team there met with us, showed us various samples, and asked thoughtful questions...
What Doesn't Need to Be Done
Finishing things requires simplification.
Project management is, roughly, the art of ensuring a team gets what needs to be done, done. Given that, a lot of the focus ends up being on those needs. Checklists, breakdowns, schedules, updates – all focused on the things that need to be done. While that’s all very important,...
The Persistent Gravity of Cross Platform
Coordinating a large product org is hard.
Agilebits recently caused a stir with their announcement that they’ve rewritten 1Password 8 as a cross-platform Electron app, replacing their well-loved native Mac app. The takes came hot and fast. Like many developers, I love and appreciate a well-crafted native UI, and I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the consistent trend...
Books Are a Seed You Can Plant
Why every diet could use the occasional book.
For most of my life, I rarely read books. I’m a pretty high-energy person, but a rather slow reader. Ever since I grew into an Extremely Online teenager, books have felt a bit… sluggish. Less informative, per hour invested, than the alternatives. Low density. I’ve always loved the idea of...
Two Birds, One Scone
On retiring words from our vocabulary.
Humans are wired for language. Soon after birth we start noticing phonemes, and within a year we’re recognizing words. Then we’re off to the races, absorbing vocabulary, trying out new words, and refining how we communicate. Despite having learned enough words to get by, as teenagers we continue to rapidly...
Don't Drink the Cream
Social etiquette proves hard to navigate.
As I was told, some years ago a team of contractors were visiting the office of a big potential client. Hoping to impress, the sales lead on the deal brought a skilled product designer along to the meeting, as well as a software developer who was well versed in the...
The Coming Supremacy of AR
How augmented reality is far more than a phone on your face.
An annoying thing about the future is that, at first, it sucks. The original iPhone was, to many people, obviously great. Although even the most optimistic iPhone users of 2008 mostly underestimated the impact smartphones would eventually have on work, play, and society, the iPhone was still clearly a product...
Navigation Should Be Boring
Apps should be interesting, but not like that.
When launching a product, especially a consumer-oriented one, you want it to be interesting. A novel, bold, or distinctive UI can make an app stand out from the crowd, be memorable, and inspire curiosity. Plus, it’s cool. Luckily, there are a lot of ways you can make an interface interesting....
The Great Bug Hunt
A crashing Xbox proves hard to debug.
A fun thing about programming is that most days, you make progress. Maybe you fix some issues, maybe you add a feature, maybe you build towards something bigger. Your code moves ever forward. Until it doesn’t. On occasion, you will hit a Bug. Not a mundane bug, some trifle you...
Bright Side of the Moon
We see an eclipse.
Most things in our world are continuums: you can have none, a little, a lot, or the whole thing. A few things are binary – it’s either there or it isn’t. A total solar eclipse is one of those binary things. Even when the the moon has covered 99% of...
The Principle of Least Surprise
An iceberg looms, and we take evasive action.
The status meeting is going well. Your demo was well received, the new feature is looking great, and you’ve been nailing your estimates. The product manager glances at her notes, and remembers one last thing. “Oh also, a lot of customers are asking for offline editing support on this screen.”...
The Disclosure Indicator
Idea Guy wants an NDA signed.
Every week, I receive roughly a dozen new project inquiries. Since Steamclock works with perhaps a dozen clients in a year, I triage roughly 50 leads for every one that turns into a real project. The time I spend doing sales is neither fun nor directly producing revenue, so I’m...
The Worst App
Stephanie isn't the only one upset about an app.
Update 2: This story now has an epilogue. One of the various things I do at Steamclock is provide support for our apps. Our music apps don’t require much support, and much of the email we get is positive, so tending to support is generally pleasant. Or at least it...
A JS Framework on Every Table
There are too many JavaScript frameworks.
Most programming languages support a small number of popular, stable application frameworks. Objective-C and Swift apps use Apple’s excellent Cocoa framework. Ruby apps more often than not use Rails. Java has a handful of established web app frameworks, and they come and go relatively slowly. In the meantime, the latest...
Unprofessionalism
Being real brings the haters.
Acting professionally and being a professional are different things. One year ago, we released Party Monster, our fun little DJ app for parties and road trips. We take our work seriously, but we included something a little unprofessional: by default, the app wouldn’t play Nickelback. Here’s what reviewers had to...
Providing joy at 60 fps
We make an app feel fast.
At Steam Clock we go to a lot of effort to make sure we ship apps with a high level of polish. Making your app solve the user’s problems well is the first 90% of building a great app. Polishing the hell out of that experience so it’s a joy...
The California Guys
I run a project. Poorly.
Some lessons in contracting learned by being a slave programmer. When the tech bubble burst, I was young and inexperienced. The local ISP where I’d been learning PHP laid me off, so I struck out on my own doing freelance web development. They say you have to learn through mistakes...
FantasyTech 3: GOTO FUN
A kid tries to make an RPG in BASIC.
Of all the things I’ve written in my ten years of programming, my first big project, FantasyTech 3, was one of the most provoking. I like the word provoking because it doesn’t say something is good, just that it provokes. FantasyTech was a huge, unmaintainable, frightening hack job that seemed...