Until a few years ago, we mostly had McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC (in bigger cities) and a handful of Starbucks and such around here. I remember when I used to go to the only Subway restaurant in the Netherlands back in 2002: now there are 181 restaurants in our tiny country. Yesterday I passed through […]
Review: Counterpart (2017)
Starz premiered Counterpart in December 2017, and it may just be the best new show of the fall season. For 50% that’s because of the unique storyline, but the other 50% is totally because of J.K. Simmons acting. Set in present day Berlin (but in a different world), there is a portal that leads to […]
Fostering a development community
Yesterday I wrote a controversial article about how I see and hear that the Ruby community is more and more influenced by poor developers. I knew it would stir up a shit storm, but the amount of tweets and comments on various sites still surprised me. We’re talking 7,000+ unique visitors in the first 18 […]
Will Rails be the new PHP?
UPDATE 2: Here’s a follow-up to this post with some thoughts on how we can turn the tide if what’s to follow below is true. UPDATE: I’m sure this is going to feel like an uncool move, but I’m not only not going to respond to all individual comments, I also closed the thread. Anything […]
My first legally binding contract (at age 11)
Recently my mother, while going through junk accumulated over the past 30 years, found a contract I made at age 11. I’m astonished that 1: it has so little spelling errors, and 2: this seems to be a legally binding contract. It has a date, the city where the document was signed, the names of […]
On public speaking
This week Zach Holman and Chiu-Ki Chan wrote about public speaking. While I’m not claiming to be a very experienced speaker, I have my two cents to add after being involved with some conferences, etc. Here’s my take on slides, rehearsing, introductions, Q&A and more. I’m mixing some practicalities in here too, things I do […]