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Lessons from Yahoo News’ Failures

Chris Lehmann’s Purple Reign gives an inside view into the demise of the Yahoo News machine. Weighing in at nearly 9 thousand words it might take you a while to get through it. I’ve snipped out some of my favorite passages from my own perspective. The original article is a much better read than my uneven summary.

Beg, Borrow, Steal

Lehmann relates how one of his reporters acted to get his job done without overdue concern to corporate support:

My reporting team did important and groundbreaking work on … the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill—our reporter moved down to New Orleans from New York, on his own dime, to cover it.

Often we have to get things done without all the support we would like–without all the resources we think we need. I like this example of dedication from this reporter who moved to the site of a big story to cover it.

http2 is coming

Web Components are a huge step forward, but will pressure developers to make more small files. This performs poorly. Luckily HTTP 2 will help fix that. Now, Akamai is teasing us with their HTTP 2 demo. Read up and prepare. You’re going to need to use these new technologies soon just to keep up.

Overcome Optimistic Time

Because I recently delivered a lecture at Utah Valley University titled “Overcoming Optimism” I’m tickled by Seth Godin’s quick post on optimistic time.

Giving optimistic estimates can seriously handicap a web developer. The people getting your estimates use them as a yardstick for judging your competence. Often they don’t have any better yardstick for judging your ability than how well you make your own deadlines.

It’s hard for you to be good enough to make up for consistently missing your own estimated delivery dates.

Rule of thumb: Treat every estimated date as a commitment. Give yourself plenty of time to be wrong.

How can you become good at this? Pay attention to your track record. Actually take notes on the estimates you give and how they turn out. Ask yourself some questions and adjust your estimating behavior:

How many of your estimates are you hitting?
- Less than 80%: you probably need to give bigger estimates.
- 100%: you should consider whether you are being aggressive enough.
How frantic are you toward the end of a schedule?
- Never in any rush: probably not aggressive enough.
- Hair on fire every time: give yourself more time.
- “What deadline?” Ouch! You need to care about deadlines.

Cheap Usability Testing on a Mac

Try out SilverBack 2.0 for recording user testing sessions. Get the screen recorded with clicks plus a view of the user as they muddle their way through your murderous web site. They are working on a 3.0. They started mentioning it about a year ago but the release is a long time coming. But the old 2.0 is FREE and ready to download (see the bottom of the page).

Don’t Forget This Workaround:

Now, there’s a reason it’s free. Most new Mac laptops won’t work with it out of the box. Some problem with the iSight camera. But, if you also install the demo of iGlasses then that tweaks your system in a way that makes the camera work with SilverBack 2.0.

High quality user testing tools for no money. What’s your next excuse? Time? Bah!

SimpleProgrammer’s: 11 Rules All Programmers Should Live By

Yesterday’s Simple Programmer post has a lot of good ideas in it. If you’re in a rush I give you the rules themselves below. Read his post for the details.

Technology is how you get to the solution, it is not THE solution
Clever is the enemy of clear
Only write code if you absolutely have to
Comments are mostly evil
Always know what your code is supposed to do before you start writing it
Test your sh—code before you ship it
Learn something new every day
Writing code is fun
You can’t know it all
Best practices are context dependent
Always strive to simplify

He correctly predicted getting a lot of comment grief on number 4. I personally agree with him. Developers tend to over-use/mis-use comments.

#7 is a lot like yesterday’s post One-a-Day Keeps Mediocrity at Bay.

YMMV: Try out TutsBucket

TutsBucket.com

Tutorials and resources for web developers and hybrid mobile developers

@ManagerJS was recently followed by @tutsbucket. With it following over 1,800 users that’s probably not much of an honor. 😉 Still, the website looks like a useful collection of tutorials. Your mileage may vary.