A name like Haack does not make me destined to win awards as an outstanding designer. I’ve come to grips with that. I’m not terrible, mind you. I’d say my skill level is somewhere in the ballpark of slightly above Geocities and closely approaching the aesthetics of Craigslist, on a good day.

Sit back and relax as I regale you with a harrowing account of trying to do something straightforward with CSS. Ha! Straightforward. How silly was I to think that. As they say,

UPDATE April 3, 2019 Several years after I wrote this post, NuGet added a package signing feature. I wrote a blog post that takes a close look at the feature.

How does a person land their first job as a developer these days?

Picture a developer’s conference held at a resort on a tropical island. What comes to mind? An endless supply of Piña Coladas? Sand abrasions in all the dark crevices of your body? Or perhaps, if you’re a developer, you imagine sitting on the beach, staring out at the ocean as a nice respite between sessions.

Who doesn’t love the smell of performance reviews in the morning? A smell welcomed by employees and managers alike with joy and delight. An efficient ritual that is fair and definitely motivates everyone to improve. A ritual that no one doubts is worth the investment of time and energy.

If you are a long time reader of my blog, you might notice something different starting today. No, the content hasn’t gotten any better. What’s new is the comment system.

I have some big news! Scientist.NET 2.0 is now available on NuGet.

The Information Industry Association adopted the motto “Putting Information at Your Fingertips” way back in the hazy days of the 1970s. However it was during a 1990 Comdex keynote (you can watch a scratchy VHS recording of it on YouTube), when a relatively young Bill Gates articulated a vision to bring that idea to reality.

Developers are real passionate about their semi-colons; or lack thereof. Comment threads on GitHub can get a bit…testy…on this topic. What’s a beleaguered¹ repository maintainer to do when an issue comment thread gets out of hand?

In The Case Against Pay for Performance, I argued against increasing pay based on performance reviews. Checkmate. Case closed. Or so I thought. Like many bloggers, I suffer from delusions of grandeur that millions ponder every word I write, are enlightened by insight, and then compelled to action.

There was once a time I regretted not attending a school with a more rigorous engineering program. I would tell myself, I should have gone to an institution like Stanford which has a strong CS program and ties to the bay area tech scene. I’d be further ahead in my career hobnobbing with VCs showering me with champagne and hundred dollar bills.

Not to stereotype tech folks, but, I’ll do it anyways. Most of us could stand to get in better physical shape. I know, that’s about as surprising as a cryptocurrency crash.

This year felt a lot like living in the darkest timeline and an episode of Black Mirror at the same time.

A recent wry tweet by @bcrypt really tickled my funny bone:

In Endless Immensity of the Sea I wrote about a leadership style that encourages intrinsic motivation. Many people I talk to don’t work in such an environment. Even those who work in places that promote the ideals of autonomy and intrinsic motivation often find that over time, things change for the worse. Why does this happen?

There’s this quote about leadership that resonates with me.

I started my first blog at haack.org some time in the year 2000. You can still see pieces of it in the Internet Archive Wayback machine.

Twin Falls lies around a forty minute drive east of Bellevue, Washington. From the trail head, the path leads to views of three separate waterfalls. Yes, three. “Twin Falls” has a nicer ring to it than “Triplet falls.”

Phil Haack is writing a blog post about ASP.NET MVC? What is this, 2011?