Ha ha, no, he just read "Learn Visual Basic in 21 Days" (well, he skimmed the first few chapters) and he thinks he can program. And he's a "hands-on" type, and feels that if he's not mucking around in everything, he's not doing his job. (Mind you, he actually *is* good at his real job - executiving and shit - he's just not a programmer)
For dealing with such people, have you ever thought about leaving in some really obvious awful stuff that they can point at and say "Hey! Fix that!" and they can go away feeling useful and you can save the buffer that already had that change made and get on with work? Or does that nagging doubt that maybe he *won't* see it - or worse, will like it - prevent you from taking such action?
Jul 24, 2011
May 31, 2011
Yahoo Mail - what happened to GBS?
Yahoo's YUI has a great idea called "Graded Browser Support". Read about it at http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/
In short, it says "we know specifically what browsers suck, and specifically what browsers don't suck, and if we don't know about it, we assume you're a geek and your browser doesn't suck." Or in their terms, C-Grade, A-Grade, and X-Grade.
The problem is that Yahoo Mail - generally a great product - isn't on board. They're about to release their "All-New" new mail ui. And they've sent out lots of messages about it, to avoid surprising users. Yet their browser detection fails to figure out that Seamonkey - a Gecko-based browser, pretty much the same as Firefox internally - should get the fancy stuff. By my reading of GBS, Seamonkey should be X-Grade, which gets all js and css. But instead they give me "Upgrade to a supported browser!"
I understand that they don't want to answer tons of support crap about "it doesn't work with IE6!!". That's the whole point of GBS. I know the risks. The current "all-new" yahoo mail also doesn't recognize seamonkey, but it at least gives a "go ahead anyway" option. Now could they just do the same and let me at least try it with my almost-Firefox browser?
In short, it says "we know specifically what browsers suck, and specifically what browsers don't suck, and if we don't know about it, we assume you're a geek and your browser doesn't suck." Or in their terms, C-Grade, A-Grade, and X-Grade.
The problem is that Yahoo Mail - generally a great product - isn't on board. They're about to release their "All-New" new mail ui. And they've sent out lots of messages about it, to avoid surprising users. Yet their browser detection fails to figure out that Seamonkey - a Gecko-based browser, pretty much the same as Firefox internally - should get the fancy stuff. By my reading of GBS, Seamonkey should be X-Grade, which gets all js and css. But instead they give me "Upgrade to a supported browser!"
I understand that they don't want to answer tons of support crap about "it doesn't work with IE6!!". That's the whole point of GBS. I know the risks. The current "all-new" yahoo mail also doesn't recognize seamonkey, but it at least gives a "go ahead anyway" option. Now could they just do the same and let me at least try it with my almost-Firefox browser?
May 30, 2011
The difference
The difference between perl programmers and java programmers, presented with the same problem:
The perl programmer thinks, "I can solve that in one line with regexp".
The java programmer thinks, "I can solve that by adding in a new framework."
The perl programmer thinks, "I can solve that in one line with regexp".
The java programmer thinks, "I can solve that by adding in a new framework."
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