Comments for david ascher

Comment on You are more than your job title by Aras

Aras — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:50:01 +0000

David, I just want to thank you for writing this post, and for the slightly unconventional job posting. Honestly, when I saw the title, it immediately made sense to me. I am only wondering why more organizations dont ask for these qualification. Although I really like to be as good as possible at what I do — I just cant code without thinking about the user experience or the interaction design. [Disclaimer: I did apply for this position] But really, I hope that I can find my own path and combine my interest for programming and interaction desigin regardless of whether I qualify for this position at this time. I know you are very busy man, but I would love to chat with you sometime and get some advice about how to survive as a fox.

Comment on Personal computing in a decentralized world: a hopeful direction by Tim

Tim — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:42:55 +0000

David, I enjoyed reading your article, though I’m not sure how humane the future will be due to raspberry pi and the like. You close with a question, “What computing will she need, and who will build it?”
I would like to suggest one answer that most of us forget or deny as a possibility, that being, she doesn’t need computing.
Yes, we can computerize relationships on a smaller, more personal scale using new tools, but why? Perhaps the benefit of not computerizing human relationships is a better proposal. I do not mean to suggest that one may live as a Luddite, however as most interpersonal social media is used to communicate with people who are physically close to one another, it does strike me that the best of family, friends and co-workers could communicate in that luxurious and ancient manner of simply being with one another.
I know this is dreamy, but, as globalization kicks in to alter society there will be a need to produce artifacts that are non-digital, also the standard of living or at least the economies in developed countries will need to fall back in order to have development in other countries, this may produce a need or desire among people to forgo digital relationships and computerized work for a more self sustained economy – a cottage industry- that supports the human potential to build objects of meaning and value. I guess what I am saying is that we shouldn’t expect that computerized technologies will be useful for everyone. Not everyone will program, or need to program, nor will the need for human relationships be fulfilled by technologies of communication.

Comment on Simple analogies as taglines are dangerous: do better by Steve Fink

Steve Fink — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:24:33 +0000

“It’s like YouTube, but started several years later, beginning with zero users, and in a niche that YouTube would invade if we proved it to be profitable.”

Did I get it right that time?

Comment on Simple analogies as taglines are dangerous: do better by Dave W

Dave W — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:21:12 +0000

Totally agree, an analogy without a specific comparison is like a bar of soap.

Comment on Simple analogies as taglines are dangerous: do better by david

david — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:00:57 +0000

But my point is that the similarity you think you see there, may not be understood. Definitely agree that saying “we’re like X but unlike them, ____” is a valuable rhetorical device.

Comment on Simple analogies as taglines are dangerous: do better by Dan S

Dan S — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:50:40 +0000

“X is like Y” can help to overcome some conceptual hurdles.
The problem is that “X is like Y” is often taken as “X is just a Y” when what is important are the differences; what distinguishes X from Y. Identity vs similarity.

Comment on Ruminations on front end-centric webapps by Mark Surman

Mark Surman — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:20:55 +0000

I agree w/ Boris and Chris: there is stuff in here even for people just starting with ‘the basics’. At least, there is if they want to get to making a ‘real thing’ quickly. Ie. a thing that’s ‘sitey’ in that it doesn’t just live in Facebook or YouTube. Also, architecturewise, I think there is alot to learn here from what we do w/ our Webmaker toolset in the realm of storage and publishing. I’ve been saying we should look at Dropbox for storage for a while now.

Comment on Ruminations on front end-centric webapps by Dethe Elza

Dethe Elza — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:42:19 +0000

Hi David,

The 404.html trick is great. The History API is great for storing state in various URLs, but I was wondering how a single-page static site would handle those different URLs as targets. Very cool hack.

Comment on Ruminations on front end-centric webapps by Brad Touesnard

Brad Touesnard — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:22:14 +0000

This new mental model is very exciting. The tools are still a bit too immature for me though (I’m no early adopter). The issue of single-page apps not being readable by search engines is probably the #1 sticking point. AirBnB and Twitter’s frameworks seem to solve a lot of the issues, so that’s very exciting.

Comment on Ruminations on front end-centric webapps by Chris McAvoy

Chris McAvoy — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 02:05:19 +0000

“I’m not sure what this means for advanced webmaker skills. At the very least explaining some of the above to a broader audience is something we could do.”

I think the ease of deployment, making publishing online as easy as saving to a filesystem, means webmaker skills become as important as basic word processing. None of the things you listed are WYSIWYG tools, they’re all targeting skilled webmakers that don’t necessarily have sysadmin chops. People sometimes question web literacy without server admin skills, but tools like these provide a lot of horsepower to people that invest in the core web making skillz.