Steve McLeod

There are so many variations on the “there are only two hard problems in computer programming...” joke that I’m starting to suspect that programming isn’t actually very easy.

-- Nat Pryce

😆

I like this succinct explanation of how product leads and founders have to worry about different things, yet still work in harmony.

That's from Mark Stephens, founder of IDRsolutions, in my interview with him for my book.

Red Queen's race - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Que...

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

It’s from the second Alice book I think. Alice through the looking glass.

I finally went MAMIL.

After years of recreational cycling and refusing to get sucked into buying the “right” gear, I finally opted for clothing to give me some padding against saddle soreness (which is a polite way of saying, a sore arse).

I feel slightly ridiculous but life is going on as normal.

I dreamt someone I know and respect - the founder of a successful software company - got access to Feature Upvote’s source code.

He told me “the code is well written - but don’t you feel you are wasting your skills on such a straightforward app?”

Not sure how to interpret that dream!

(Posted during a bike ride I’m tracking on Strava, as I take my half-way coffee break. 🤷‍♂️)

I kinda feel the same.

Because we *can* track everything these days, we often wrongly feel we must.

That sense of pride I feel when a game I know and have played signs up for a Feature Upvote account - as happened yesterday. 😃

They're still in trial mode, so I won't share the name until they start a paid subscription. 🤐

"if you are a scammer and you’re not doing an AI startup, you’re wasting your time"

I love Matt Levine.

Blue Prince is a Conversation with the House. A comic essay by Ari Ganahl Contains minor spoilers for themes and mechanics in the game Blue Prince

This feels like a silly time to post this, but I drew an essay about the game Blue Prince and I want to share.

This game got inside my brain in a way I really enjoyed, and I have thoughts
(no spoilers for puzzles or plot)

#comicoop 💥 #BluePrince #fanart

The full job ad is here: www.worksinprogress.news/p/were-hirin...

Excerpt from a job listing I saw:

"Your role will be to browse the internet all day..."

There are worse jobs of course, but I can't imagine enjoying such a job.

YouTube video by Wendover Productions The Logistics of Music Festivals

Fascinating video about the logistics behind Glastonbury.

youtu.be/Om3IQ5HEQ8g?...

Got reminded last night about the death-march project I worked on at a German bank.

“Got to hit the deadline”, “Failure not an option”, “We need to work weekends”, all the normal BS.

And then just after the deadline, the bank was sunk by the 2008 global financial crisis.

Thanks Michael!

"runs his business completely stress free" - not quite completely!

But definitely, I aim for a low-stress business.

Very honest! and amusing 😀

Sadly, probably not a record!

So, what's the reason for having kept the prices the same from 17 years?

If these are the things for which you need coaching, read more about my coaching here: steveofmcleod.com

2) Destroying the “one more feature” mindset.

Developers feel - against all evidence saying otherwise - what the business needs is just one more feature. It’s never true.

Meanwhile sales and marketing, etc are being done ad hoc at best. That’s what really needs attention.

2/3

My side gig is coaching developers-turned-bootstrapping-founders.

It’s extremely satisfying.

Two recurring themes I help my clients with:

1) Raising prices. They know they should, but for ‘reasons’ they don’t. I have strategies to break through this, the foremost of which is accountability.

1/3

The Philosophy of Software Design – with John Ousterhout Stanford professor John Ousterhout explains why thoughtful software design matters more than ever as AI tools transform coding practices and developer workflows.

Great podcast episode here for software devs.

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-philos...

A couple of months ago I gave myself permission to do about 10 hours of coding per week.

Even though my time is best spent on other parts of my business.

Coding is what brings me work satisfaction.

So far this new policy has made running my business way more enjoyable.

That movie is wonderful.

The scene where he performs in South Africa for the first time is so moving - and real.

Some HN wisdom.

It captures my feelings in two ways:

1. Web dev did become very frustrating for me - I felt many of the de facto conventional approaches were unnecessary and unhelpful.

2. You really can achieve a lot with pure JS + HTML sans frameworks.

I've been working on a pointless but enjoyable mini-project this week: clean up some of the oldest parts of Feature Upvote, with the aim of removing a web dev workhorse from a decade ago.

So long, jQuery, you served us well.

It's htmx all the way in my app!

Introducing htmx into Feature Upvote a couple of years ago allowed us to delete roughly two-thirds of all our own JavaScript.

This is big news for anyone who wants to use Tailwind UI components but are turned by the complexity and weight of using React or Vue.

i.e. Me!

Getting the fine details right of JS implementation of a UI control is painstaking work.

tailwindcss.com/blog/vanilla...

The small turnout was good - it allowed it me to be more informal and interactive.

Next time (in a month), I'll do all my promotion within 48 hours of the scheduled start time.

I ran a Feature Upvote webinar yesterday.

About half the registered people didn't turn up. I had been warned about this being the case, so I was prepared.

From my tiny dataset: the people who registered closer to the webinar date were more likely to turn up. Again, I was warned.