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Articles by Alex Feinman
The Housecat Theory of the 10x Engineer
I recently re-encountered the myth of the “10x engineer”. Having been a 10x engineer, able to output more useful product than the other 10 people on a team, I have been convinced that such people exist, but — and this is the crucial part — only because most teams have someone who is currently contributing negative work, possibly several somebodies.
Tropes I Won't Write
(All tropes available for review on TVTropes.org; warning for existential-level time sink threat.) Crowning Moment of Awesome. Screw that noise. I'm like 90% sure this is rooted in a deep insecurity on the part of authors, being afraid of achieving something. Fridged women. Ditto. Find real motivations for your heroes. Rape as "spice". GRrrrr.
Is the term second degree customer/user/client acceptable or easy to understand? What is a better alternative?
5 I am trying to describe a situation in which you design a product for a company, and they use it to engage with their customers. So from my own perspective, the company would be the primary (or first degree) customer, and the company's customers (or second degree) customer can be unambiguously described. And if the company provides a service to another company that also deals with their own customers then you can call it a third degree customer (and so on and so forth).
SHIELD badge, SVG style
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The word TEST in the invitation for usability testing cause fear in users. How to solve this problem?
This is something worth paying attention to. Aside from the highschool/college exam flashback anxiety you talk about, the Hawthorne Effect suggests that "individuals modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed", and some might argue that it's practically impossible to to "observe" a natural use of a product or website (without resorting to secret recording).
How can I ensure users don't fear the word TEST in the invitation for usability testing?
This is something worth paying attention to. Aside from the highschool/college exam flashback anxiety you talk about, the Hawthorne Effect suggests that "individuals modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed", and some might argue that it's practically impossible to to "observe" a natural use of a product or website (without resorting to secret recording).
Why does my for loop exit on some platforms and not on others?
Just starting to learn C (taking a class with it) and I'm currently playing around with loops and I'm running into some odd behavior which I dunno how to explain it. On my laptop running Ubuntu 14.04, this code does not break it runs to completion. On my school's computer running CentOS 6.6, it also runs fine. On Windows 8.1, the loop never terminates. What is more strange is when I edit the conditional of the for loop to ...i<=11..., the code only terminates on my laptop running Ubuntu.
Why do door knobs still exist?
Doors are either left-handed or right-handed, depending on which way they open. Doorknobs can be installed on either side of the door. Handles are normally designed for either the right or left side of the door (i.e. you need a left/right pair for each door, one on this side of the door, the other on the other side of the door). (This appears to be a topic of confusion, and it seems that this confusion is wide-spread....
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