Josh Haas's Web Log

New post by me on the Bubble blog:

I recently read Alex Ohanian (reddit founder)’s book Without Their Permission. It’s a great title, and it conveys his main point: that in the internet era, it’s easier to get around traditional gatekeepers, which means that the weird, crazy, outside-the-norm ideas have more of a chance of coming to life.

That’s awesome! Unfortunately, Alex’s book is mostly about replacing one set of gatekeepers (big corporations, government, etc.) with a new set: venture capitalists and incubators such as Y Combinator (which is harder to get into than the Ivy League).

Read the full post here!

New post by me on the Bubble blog:

Git is fucking awesome. It is awesome for many reasons, but a big one is that it’s decentralized: there’s no authoritative version of the codebase. What that allows is developer independence; I can work on X, and my friend can work on Y, and we don’t need to sweat the little stuff like who’s touching which files.

But. There is one place left in the modern development workflow where centralization still lurks. The place it haunts is continuous integration, and the monster’s name is “master”.

Full post here!

New post on the Bubble blog:

Here’s the difference: Practical feedback is feedback that raises the bar. It’s feedback that says, “You think this is okay? No, it’s not, it sucks, and it’s causing you to fail.” “Your homepage looks like a 3-year-old drew it.” “Your marketing copy is strange and alienating.” “Your product is unreliable and buggy.”

Read the full post here