Real Life NPCs are Boring

Let's start off with my likes for this title: First, the graphics are really good. I really felt immersed in the environment and quaint little neighborhood in the first level. I know other games have pretty good graphics, but Going Outside: You Know, Real Life? takes it to another level, because when you look closely at an object, instead of seeing blurry pixels, the developers made a point to add really fine details. The levels in this game are huge; there's plenty of areas to explore and lo...

 Programmers Get Better with Age

This kind of data is hard to come by, but thanks to almighty Stackoverflow ands their wise decision (thanks Joel), to make this data publicly available we can mine this data to our collective benefit. With a simple bash script to download the data, a small Java program to extract the stats and Google Docs to make the graphs, I was able to produce some interesting stats. I pulled in data of about 70.000 developers whose Stackoverflow reputation is over 100. On average 53% of them have their ...

 ReFactoring: Kill Your Darlings

In software design, when you find yourself feeling particularly proud of a neat little bit of design or code, stop and ask yourself how someone who didn't give birth to it will regard it. If it turns out to be overwrought or too slick for the need, you should probably kill your darling and replace it with an ordinary solution that others can actually use, and not just marvel at. Darlings are sometimes characterized as being "ever so clever." For an example, the phrase "ever so clever" is ever...