The Blog that Noone Reads

One thing I really enjoy about the Mac development community is that there are tons of really tiny apps designed to do just one thing really well. Instead of creating some monolithic do-everything-imaginable app, try breaking it out into a few smaller apps. The Unix shell is so powerful because developers have taken this approach for a long time. You can reduce complexity drastically while allowing the user to be even more flexible with their workflow.

I just discovered I Love Stars from Potion Factory, which is a simple app for making it easy to rate your music in your iTunes library. The best way I’ve found to rate my music is to do so while it’s playing. I Love Stars makes it easy to do so without needing to remember to pull up iTunes every three and a half minutes.

Why the Lucky Stiff, pseudonymous artist/programmer has deleted his entire body of work from the internet, including his blogs, github, and twitter accounts. Many rubyists, including myself, were inspired by his work. His style and talent were unique, not just in the Ruby community, but in the whole world of software development.

John Resig wrote about the disappearance:

_why – even in his code – was eccentric, humorous, cute, and whimsical. He relished his ability to express his art and was extremely good at it, at the same time.

Underlying the layer of whimsy that permeated his work there was a more serious tone: expression, simplicity, and education. In all of his code, and writing, he was constantly trying to find ways to bring the art of hacking to more people – to younger people – to simplify the complexities that normally permeate development.