Category: Articles (Page 225 of 255)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

My Third Post on Medium: On Music and Millennials

July 11, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to maintaining this site, one of the things that I try to do is stay “on topic.” Looking back through the posts, you see that there are actually very few things that I discuss that aren’t on the topic of development in some capacity.

For what it’s worth, I think having extreme focus on a blog is important. Spreading out too wide dilutes content and leaves you with a mixed-to-no audience.

And that’s why I hesitate sharing some of the stuff like this.

But you know, I’ve always enjoyed seeing what some of my fellow developers are writing and sharing outside of their typical stuff, so I always assume that a post like that now and again doesn’t hurt.

So as I’ve continued to explore Medium and what they’re doing with the service, I wrote a post earlier this week all about music and millennials.

Your WordPress Plugin Idea – What’s The Point?

July 11, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to coming up with WordPress plugin ideas (or themes or general applications on any platform, for that matter), we all have different ways of going about doing it.

Some of us do it by scratching our own itch, some of us do it by modifying or adjusting an existing project to meet our needs, some of us dream up a random idea, and some of us do all of the above.

But coming up with an idea for a project is only half of it – you’ve also got to determine if your project serves a particular purpose, solves a particular problem, or has a particular use case.

I mean, very few things in this world are created “just because,” right?

Why I’ve Taken Referral Fees

July 10, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Like those of you who are reading this, I’m a big fan of reading other people’s blogs for all of the traditional reasons:

Entertainment
Learning something new about a topic that I don’t know much about
Having my opinions or thoughts challenged about something
…and more

Of course, we all have our preferences for what and who we like to read, but I think that we also have our preferences for the types of topics that we like to read.

Case in point: One of the things that I enjoy reading the most is from people who offer opinions that challenge my own because it gives me food for thought to re-evaluate my own position on any given topic.

Sometime, I end up conceding a point; other times, I end up reaffirming my stance on a position. The thing is, I end up taking a significant amount of time to mull things over, so I rarely end up commenting on the post as soon as I read it.

Then, when I am ready to comment, it’s often too late and the time for the discussion has passed. Sure, sometimes I go back and leave a comment, sometimes I’ll chat with the person on Twitter, and sometimes, I’ll respond in a blog post.

My Day-To-Day: Listen to Podcasts

July 5, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I try to make sure that I do at least once a day is listen to podcasts. Honestly, I try to listen to several throughout the day, but it really depends on what all I have going on.

For the most part, I listen to podcasts whenever I’m in the car driving or I’m out on a run. Sure, there are only so many podcasts or so much of a podcast than you can listen to on any given, but this has worked pretty well for me for the past few years.

On top of that, I’ve given a number of podcast applications a fair shake and have come away with a favorite. But I’ll cover that in a second.

Go Ahead and Admit Your Mistakes

July 1, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Arguably, one of the easiest observations to make about the development community is that we’re not exactly the best at admitting our mistakes. Admitting our mistakes is akin to admitting that we were wrong or that we didn’t know what we were doing and no one likes to do that.

Naturally, right?

It’s human nature to want to showcase our successes and mask our failures, but the truth is that no one has any success without actually failing (and likely several times over at that).

Lame.

Unfortunately, I think that developers may be more notorious than others for this. We’re good at criticism, trolling, and flat out demeaning other people’s work, but we’re not so good at accepting it when it comes back around to us.

Although this is may be a bit idealistic, it shouldn’t be that way.