When it first happened I was irritated. A few days later I was irritated that I was still irritated. It didn’t make any sense, it wasn’t a big thing and it shouldn’t have bugged me at all, much less still a few days later.

After a while I realised that my irritation was more rational than I initially thought so I started to write them down as a way of structuring them. And here they are.

This links in with my earlier post about good technology being invisible. Fonts and typefaces have a far bigger impact on the readability of text than most people think yet you almost never notice their design unless it’s bad enough to make it difficult to comprehend.

This blog, “Quality in Typefaces & Fonts,” by Thomas Phinney, an Adobe employee, doesn’t discuss the design of typefaces — which is an interesting area in itself — but does give some insight into how much effort goes into making a good electronic font.

You’ve already seen once my disdain for Christian extremists. This week I found one more reason when we went to see “La Marche de l’empereur (2005),” or “March of the Penguins” if you, like me, can only read English.

As you may be aware, the Christian Right have adopted this movie as an example of both monogamy and Intelligent Design. If you’ve seen the film you’ll realise that it’s neither.

This is incredible. And I don’t use the word lightly.

The site in question is the CAP Entertainment Media Analysis Reports. Here you can find hundreds of “reviews” of movies and ratings of how well they conform to one interpretation of good Christian values. They claim that it’s objective but there are a number of opinions about the faith that would not be shared by all.

I think pretty much all of my favourite films do very badly on their scale. I have not checked through all of them yet but two of the best ones so far are for The Incredibles and The Passion of the Christ. They both score roughly the same, yet the former, a typical Pixar movie with all those hallmarks that Disney films used to have, has “…behavioral, moral and value implantation dangers” while the latter, despite depicting a man being nailed to a cross, “…is [only] a movie.”

Most sites have a Frequently Asked Questions section and I don’t want to feel left out. So far no-one has actually asked any questions, so I am just guessing.

How are you?

I find that I annoy myself by saying “I’m good” when asked that question. I’m just not convinced it’s actually valid English. I got into the habit when I found that many Americans stare at you blankly if you answer any other way.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” or so said Arthur C. Clarke. What struck me when I was on holiday a couple of weeks ago is that there’s a level beyond that: when you don’t even notice.

We were sat in a restaurant having dinner and for reasons that I can no longer recall, conversation came round to the first UK hit by the Rolling Stones. ‘H’ said that it was “Come On,” ‘J’ swore that it was something entirely different. This all being at least ten years before I was born I had no real opinion on the subject but I did know a man who would have the answer. I immediately took out my mobile and texted him. A few minutes later the answer came back (‘H’ was right).

Let’s cut to the chase: if you’ve read and enjoyed any of Joel Spolsky’s ramblings on the web you’ll like this book. Skip the rest of this review and just go buy it.

For the benefit of those that have not heard of him, who is this Joel chap and what is the book and his normal prose about? The “About the Author” section describes him as an industry veteran that writes an “anti-Dilbert manifesto” on his website. I can’t think of a better description, which is why I have shamelessly copied it rather than finding my own phrase…

Introduction

At the moment I’m reading Steve McConnell’s excellent ‘Professional Software Engineering,’ in which he talks extensively about creating a genuine software engineering profession. I believe that this is a great aim and, although I disagree with him on some points, I think the basic premise is both a good idea and inevitable.

However, that is not the point that I want to talk about, although it is related. It’s the fact that, even though I work in a relatively professional organisation, almost no-one here reads computer science books. Sure, there are piles of guides to complex Oracle stuff, C++ this and XML that, but there are no books around on how the whole process should work.

Introduction

Fortunately, although you can predict the tone of the end of the book, there are more than a few surprises in store.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Introduction

One thing that no-one mentions while you’re at university, planning to go into this industry, is that most of the problems you come across are not technical in nature. Problems with computers are usually fairly tractable and can be solved, even if not elegantly, by anyone who is interested enough to have a go. It’s the other, people problems that are tricky.