<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!-- generator="WordPress/2.9.2" -->
<rss version="0.92">
<channel>
	<title>Colin&#039;s Blog</title>
	<link>http://colinsteele.org</link>
	<description>Travails of a CTO</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:35:51 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>Scala for Ruby Programmers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I don&#8217;t quite know how, but somehow I&#8217;ve managed to never learn Java.  Yes, even though the family dog is named Java, I can&#8217;t write a line of code in it.  I&#8217;m glad I&#8217;ve been able to dodge that bullet; I&#8217;ve written mostly C and Ruby code over the last decade or so, with a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2010/04/scala-for-ruby-programmers/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>hiring badass programmers&#8230; or, at least&#8230; trying to</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;d love to say I know a good programmer when I see him (or her).  That would be a lie.  The difficulty in predicting the performance of programmers lies in the fact that programming, as human endeavors go, well&#8230; it&#8217;s a bit odd.  We&#8217;d like to say (as a group that wants to be taken [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2010/01/hiring-badass-programmers-or-at-least-trying-to/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>RubyInline and ImageScience</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Quick shout-outs for excellent Ruby tools: ImageScience and RubyInline.  We wrestled with RMagic on and off all week and finally punted, moving over to ImageScience with a sigh of relief.  We needed a small enhancement to ImageScience which was easily done using RubyInline.  Voila.  I like it when things are this easy.
]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2010/01/rubyinline-and-imagescience/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Want to write better?  Stop using the verb &#8216;to be&#8217;.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Some years ago while studying the occult, I stumbled across Robert Anton Wilson&#8217;s Quantum Psychology, which blew my mind all to pieces.  I still pull out my dog-eared copy every year or two to reinforce my mind-blowness, and it never disappoints.  One major benefit I&#8217;ve realized from it, while prosaic, may be of some use [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2010/01/want-to-write-better-stop-using-the-verb-to-be/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Metaphor, Storytelling, and Agreement in Software Development</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A brief essay on meaning, language, mental models, storytelling and metaphors in software development.]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/metaphor-storytelling-and-agreement-in-software-development/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Geek Bucket List</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ok, maybe Bucket List is a bit of a stretch.
But if I had oodles of free time I&#8217;d do the following geeky things:
 

Lisp.  Really learn it this time.  No.  Really.
Smalltalk too.
Build and install an active solar system and a solar hot water heater on my house.
Do an iPhone app.  Yay, Objective-C!

 
What&#8217;s on your list?
]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/geek-bucket-list/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Hiring Internet Talent and the Future of Charlottesville</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ 
 
 
As CTO, I seem to be getting the recurring question, &#8220;Can you (hotelicopter) find the tech-savvy talent you need in Charlottesville?&#8221;  It&#8217;s a valid question.  Long gone are the days of Kesmai, EA, Mr. Goodbucks, and the beloved Value America.  These days, we have influx of spooks, a smattering of biotech companies, and in the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/hiring-internet-talent-and-the-future-of-charlottesville/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Kicking and Screaming into Programming in the Large</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s a fine line or a broad one between programming-in-the-small and programming-in-the-large, but at hotelicopter, we&#8217;ve definitely stepped over that line.  Along the way, in a very short amount of time (6 months, give or take), we&#8217;ve begun moving to the cloud (aws), adopted distributed source code control (git), automated deployment [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/kicking-and-screaming-into-programming-in-the-large/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Geokit</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Quick shout-out for Geokit for Ruby, which is a most excellent and useful bit of Ruby code.  Installation is a snap, it&#8217;s easy to use, and you&#8217;ll love the expressive power of little things like this:
Store.find(:all, :origin=&#62;'100 Spear st, San Francisco, CA', :within=&#62;10)
]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/geokit/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Premature Optimization and the Role of CTO</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In system design, generally I believe there&#8217;s no such thing as &#8220;premature optimization&#8220;, but life in a startup demands profound thought into exactly when we implement our optimizations.  Spending time and money up front on making things fast (and/or scalable) comes with a hefty little price tag we like to call &#8220;opportunity cost.&#8221;  We live [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://colinsteele.org/2009/12/premature-optimization-and-the-role-of-cto/</link>
			</item>
</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Dynamic Page Served (once) in 0.675 seconds -->
