Archive for the 'Productivity' Category

How Fast Do People Type?

December 5, 2007

Less than half the population of the world has the manual dexterity to wiggle their fingers at the speed of 50 words per minute or better.
–Dr. Alan Lloyd, seminal typing instructor.
Computer professionals often seem to have unrealistically high expectations of what the “average” typist can do. For example, according to this Wikipedia article (as of [...]

Hick’s Law

November 21, 2007

I do not put much faith in Hick’s Law. I’ve seen it misapplied and drastically misinterpreted. Its limits, and edge-cases, are not widely known. I am convinced that it is generally not a dominant factor, even when it is relevant. I don’t agree with many design choices it is used to justify. In [...]

Useful MacOSX Terminal Commands

November 16, 2007

This post has moved here.

Assert Outlet Connections

October 16, 2007

This simple NSCAssert has saved me a lot of bother. In any class that has an IBOutlet connected to something, Put
NSCAssert(outlet1 && outlet2 && … && outletn, @”An outlet got disconnected!”);
in the awakeFromNib method. Then if you ever accidentally disconnect an outlet, you’ll find out about it quickly.
I think this is a worthwhile [...]

Selecting Text

September 26, 2007

Here’s a helpful MacOSX feature that I finally stumbled upon. If you hold option down while selecting text, you can select an arbitrary rectangle, instead of some number of rows. A picture is worth a lot of words:

This is great for removing extraneous information from console logs (pictured), or copying just what you [...]