How Long Will we Keep Typing?
I’ve been playing through an old PC game – The Typing of the Dead: Overkill. It takes one of the campiest light-gun shooters (featuring zombies), and replaces shooting with the Wii-mote with typing out phrases...
Computing
Which Software Jobs will be Safe from Software?
I came across a thought-provoking article the other day that postulated the eventual obsolesce of software engineers. The author draws parallels with the renaissance enjoyed by those who write software today, with those who operated...
Retina is Driving PC Hardware
Nope, couldn’t do it. I took the new Macbook “upgrade” that I bought a few weeks ago back to the Apple store and told them that I’d stick with my 4-year-old battleship for now. Quick aside – Apple’s hardware return policies are a blast from the past. Most products can be returned, with...
Unlearning Keyboard Shortcuts
Muscle memory is a powerful tool. I’m currently typing on a Kinesis Advantage keyboard. It’s yet another ergonomic keyboard, one those major difference – which contributes to its steeper learning curve – is in its...
4 Years Later, a Slower MacBook Upgrade
I went out and got the new MacBook to try for a week or two. It is quite a wonder of hardware and industrial design: thin and light, cools completely passively (so no noisy fans), with a fairly good retina display and a good 5-6 hours of battery life under my normal usage patterns. The...
The Gap Bridged by Dev Bootcamps
I’m sad, but not surprised, that some students found the CS classes at my alma mater intimidating: She graduated in 2012 from the University of California at Berkeley, which has a top-ranked computer-science program,...