I’m posting this with Flock, which looks like a rather interesting browser… I think I’ll make it my default for a while.
It’s interesting working for a relatively big company - my new gang are a lot more organised than SI, and I’d say that on the whole the development team are more experienced and more open minded, which has a good effect on the overall quality of the coding.
I’ve got a way to go though before I reach nerdvana. This place, on the other hand, sounds a lot closer to the way I’d like to be doing things in an ideal world.
I’ve made a personal commitment to doing as much unit testing as I can on my code, regardless of what anyone else does. It’s pretty tricky to do pair programming though, which is what I’d really like, unless we all commit to it. I haven’t actually asked, but I think I can guess what the answer would be…
Because I have to suffer the ignominy of using Windows every day at work, I’m starting to develop a wish list Mac features that are missing from Windows that would really, really make my life easier.
With the combination of my normal desktop pattern, Yahoo widgets (formerly Konfabulator), and Object Dock Plus to replace the task bar, I’ve now got something that looks and feels quite familiar.
But there are two things in particular that I really miss.
- built in spell checking in all text fields
- some sort of “default folder” style file history in “open” and “save” dialog boxes.
Recently I’ve started using my old Palm Pilot again - mostly because I don’t tend to take my laptop into work now that I’m doing console development, and having the palm around lets me jot the occasional note on the train. It’s also the best way I’ve come up with to sync my work and home address books… although the jury is definitely out on that one (ever used Lotus Notes? It’s the worst pile of crap I’ve ever had foisted on me in my entire working life).
Anyway, one of the reasons I stopped using my Palm in the first place, and something that still drives me absolutely nuts, is the fact that you can’t initiate a sync on the Palm from the desktop - you have to press a bloody button on the Palm.
What’s all that about? It’s the most stupid thing ever in the history of stupid things. If the Palm is in the dock, it should just sync regularly. Why require human intervention? It’s amazing how much time and money can go into a device, and one fatal design flaw can slip through entirely unnoticed.