How to blog An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com Own your domain and use simple technology Never change the technology Write something on a schedule Never change the technology Things Learned Blogging blogging
Hacking is the opposite of marketing An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com One of my favorite definitions of “hacking” is the creative reuse of tools for new and unexpected purposes. Hacking is using your email account as a hard drive, using your bicycle seat to open a beer, using Minecraft’s red bricks to create a calculator in the game. The opposite of hacking is marketing. Marketing tells you that this particular non-stick pan is the pan you’ll use to make omelettes, and you’ll do it in the morning dressed in fashionable clothing in a nice kitchen. It includes a photo and inspirational copywriting to drive this home. Marketing dictates a style, context, and purpose for even the most general-purpose products. This narrative needs to be specific so that you can readily imagine it: it’s you, in an Airbnb, laughing with friends. All sorts of ways to use the machineIn ways you didn't anticipateStretching the product toolsadvertisingcreativityutility
The return of fancy tools An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com Technology is seeing a little return to complexity. Dreamweaver gave way to hand-coding websites, which is now leading into Webflow, which is a lot like Dreamweaver. Evernote give way to minimal Markdown notes, which are now becoming Notion, Coda, or Craft. Visual Studio was “disrupted” by Sublime Text and TextMate, which are now getting replaced by Visual Studio Code. JIRA was replaced by GitHub issues, which is getting outmoded by Linear. The pendulum swings back and forth, which isn’t a bad thing complexitysimplicitytoolssoftwaretechnologynotetaking
Picking better names for variables, functions, and projects An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com Avoid weasel words Follow patterns religiously Don’t cheap out on characters Call things the same thing Don’t name internal projects When things change, change their names namescode
Over-imagination An architect intent on being different may in the end prove as troubling as an over-imaginative pilot or doctor. However important originality may be in some fields, restraint and adherence to procedure emerge as the more significant virtues in a great many others. We rarely wish to be surprised by novelty as we round street corners. We require consistency in our buildings, for we are ourselves frequently close to disorientation and frenzy. Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness The signature designnovelty