rpc_was_taken's comments

rpc_was_taken | 2 years ago | on: Control USB power on a port by port basis on some USB hubs

Not really, we needed that on windows and ended up buying a Pegasus Astro USB Control Hub (https://pegasusastro.com/products/usb-control-hub/).

We needed to reset a plugged high-speed webcam, and we needed high-speed USB3, and the ability to cut the data lines too.

The Windows driver (usbctl.sys?) does not support the USB power control commands, the solution that Pegasus or Yepkit use is to add a HID/COM USB device to control the power rail. [edit] We used Pegasus instead of yepkit due to it going to a customer setup, and the bare-board yepkit was a no-go.

rpc_was_taken | 10 years ago | on: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

If you do mainly Objective-C, JetBrains AppCode is pretty good. Refactoring tools are awesome, even though they are still working in Swift support. Code navigation et.al. are on par with other JetBrains products. Debugging works pretty fine.

You still have to revert to XCode for that crap that is Interface Builder. JetBrains tried to write an IB clone inside AppCode, but they abandoned it.

AppCode lets me code 80% of the time without having to use that horror that XCode is. Alcatraz helps a bit alleviating the other 20%, specially the XVim plugin for Xcode.

rpc_was_taken | 11 years ago | on: CLion, the new C/C++ IDE from JetBrains

Maybe just a question of time. AppCode (the Objective-C version) runs LLDB.

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: How Spotify builds products [pdf]

How? Badly. I love the large catalog of classical music, but being unable to browse it in a unified way is a pain in the ass. They blame it on the publisher-provided metadata, but it's not all the publisher's fault.

In the iPhone app you cannot read the whole track name, so Imagine finding a certain piece when all you see is:

  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...
  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...
  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...
  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...
  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...
  Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Conc...

On iTunes, pressing and holding over a song shows the complete track label. They seem to be trapped in a featuritis loop, giving no priority to feature polish.

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: UK to create new cyber defence force

Or very 40s when Norbert Wiener published "Cybernetics, or Communication and Control in the Animal and the Machine".

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: Confusing UI in iOS7

since time immemorial

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: Why We Hate Infographics

With Adblock it didn't even load the CSSs. And I might say, reading it in the default font over a white page improved the readability a lot. Maybe they should apply their own recomendations and reduce "CSS junk" on their site. ;)

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: Apple now shows iOS usage share on App Store

I wonder how many of this 6% are non-updated developer testing iphones/ipads.

rpc_was_taken | 12 years ago | on: Vim as a Python IDE, or Python IDE as Vim

In the same vein, I've been very happy with AppCode, the Objective-C IDE from JetBrains. Its refactoring, templates and code generators are a great time saver. The vim emulation sometimes falls short compared to vim (missing Ctrl-N autocompletion and surrounds very much), but allows me to edit quite efficiently nonetheless, while having a comptetent autocompletion engine. (Also just a happy customer)

rpc_was_taken | 13 years ago | on: Animated Vector Icons

Might be better to just animate them on click. Hover animations/color changes had some use for links, but a button shape already conveys "clickability". On the other hand, animating on click gives a nice feedback (how many times have I clicked a slow-responding link and wondered if I really did).

rpc_was_taken | 13 years ago | on: Setting up Sublime Text 2

In fact Plan9's sam and acme claimed the use of mouse was indeed faster based on studies. See http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/mouse_vs._keyboard/

rpc_was_taken | 13 years ago | on: How to Prototype an App in 1 hour: meet POP

Really doubt it.

And the idea behind paper prototyping is to be able to discard without regret. Once you code, you can get attached to your first ideas and not iterate, or iterate over some arbitrary restriction set by the tools. Paper prototyping makes it easy to "kill your darlings" without regret.

More than that, the second and probably more important idea is to avoid the customer to get attached to an un-iterated design, and the "but it's almost done!" effect that can be devastating when negotiating times.