On Piracy
At some point in your Banana Stand’s lifetime you will become aware that people are consuming your content without paying you for it. Either someone will send you an email that’s like “hey, I think I...
View ArticleThe Pond Scum
When you’re first starting a Banana Stand, you’re hungry for guidance. Tips and tricks. Knowledge to give you a leg up. And it’s out there. Somewhere. But first you have to get through The Pond Scum....
View ArticleThrow, Catch, Raise, Rescue – I’m So Confused!
One of the aspects of Ruby that often confuses newbies coming from other languages is the fact that it has both throw and catch and raise and rescue statements. In this article I’ll try and clear up...
View ArticleYour Autoresponder (A Pattern Language of Banana Stands)
OK so you know that your mailing list is the foundation of your banana stand business. Now it’s time to talk about the tech you use to manage your mailing list. First, let’s make this concrete What I’m...
View ArticleThe Pre-Sale Trap
If you’re not careful, running a banana stand can feel like an endless bootstrap. Which works about as well as running a nation in a constant state of emergency. Or a body on nothing but caffeine and...
View ArticleThe Enterprise Riptide – A Pattern of Banana Stands
I’m at an interesting point in the career of my banana stand. I’m either actively replacing, or thinking of replacing, many of the software-as-a-services (SaaS) providers I’ve built my business on. And...
View ArticlePreface to an Unwritten Programming Language Book
This book is intended as a programmer’s introduction or refresher to the Blub programming language. It is incomplete, opinionated, and short. We assume that you are a working programmer with several...
View ArticleOn Rigor, White Supremacy, and Occam’s Razor
A correspondent once took issue with my amplification of Alex Hanna’s indictment of Google as a racialized organization. They objected that Hanna’s accusations weren’t backed up “rigorously”. I’m...
View ArticleWhy Grace Matters (for Software Development)
Someone asked me why I named my developer training site “Graceful.Dev“, so I thought I’d write about that. The theme of “grace” has been an emergent one in my work for years. I think that grace is an...
View ArticleOn “owning” software
Once upon a time, I owned a beautiful big house in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee. I don’t anymore. Now I rent a modest little rancher in a suburb of St. Louis. But every month, I still send out a...
View ArticleProgrammer Discipline Avoidance
Over the past year I’ve received a crash-course in Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). PDA is an expression of autism, but in some ways it differs radically from what people usually think of when...
View ArticleWhere is the programmer inspo?
Programming is widely regarded, at least among enthusiasts, as a creative act. Calling it a “craft” has gained widespread acceptance, and it’s not unusual to hear the term “art” thrown around (if...
View ArticleHow to cope with technology FOMO
Eight years ago Ray Bango wrote: …many web developers who have been able to hang their hat on a specific technology for “x” years are incredibly concerned by the rate of churn in the JavaScript (and...
View ArticleYou’re not selling a solution
I read this in a business book once: People don’t buy products, they buy a better version of themselves. I’m not sure what book I saw that in. It’s something Kathy Sierra talks about a lot. But...
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