I keep a pad of graph paper next to my desk with a nice pen. I find it useful to sketch out ideas, data structures, etc. on graph paper since the grid lines help keep things lined up.
I'm very curious to see what Playdom can do with Disney's IP. Especially with the Marvel Comics acquisition Disney made last year, there is great potential to build some really interesting and "sticky" social games around Spiderman and friends.
As a new father, the most important thing for me was how Josh demonstrated you can succeed in the startup game and still maintain balance in your family life.
You need to start a habit of being productive. I like to tie going to the gym with working on a personal project. I find getting up and going to the gym first thing on a Saturday morning makes it much easier to sit down after and work on something productive. If I sleep in and ease into the weekend, it's almost impossible to overcome that initial inertia and get something done.
I remember seeing Stanford advertise a full semester course in iPhone programmig back when developing for the iPhone got really popular. I don't think MIT had anything similar, and it does show how Stanford is willing to quickly adapt to today's software landscape.
I think a big advantage that the iPhone has over Android is that Apple is able to synchronize hardware and software development since it exists within the same company. I imagine Google works with handset vendors but there must be inherent inefficiencies in communicating across multiple companies. Apple can maintain a yearly drumbeat of putting out a polished product where the software and hardware dovetail nicely.
In my experience, programmers can attain a certain amount of fame at the local level.You can become well-known for being the author of a key piece of software that your company uses. Unfortunately, it just means people know who to talk to when their is a bug or a feature request.
From Wikipedia: Musk has described himself as a workaholic who routinely puts in 100-hour work weeks, primarily on his businesses Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In his rare free time, he says he plays with his five children
From Wikipedia: "Musk has described himself as a workaholic who routinely puts in 100-hour work weeks, primarily on his businesses Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In his rare free time, he says he plays with his five children"
I think part of the problem is that Ballmer doesn't have a deep technical background. And unlike Jobs, he doesn't have a world class sense of design to point him in the right direction.
I'm not particularly offended by the language or writing style, but signal to noise ratio was pretty low. If you are going to write like this, at least be funny.
As a side note, I really enjoyed attending the SD West conferences in the past. Alas, it has morphed into something focused on Cloud Computing and lost it's platform independent focus.
Thanks for posting that link. As someone with a 1 year old and aspirations of having my own software business, the video provides tremendous inspiration and food for thought.
It's probably feasible given enough time. However, Adobe Flex/flash excels at graphics and image manipulation and provides a set of APIs that let you focus on developing features for this particular domain.
Can you discuss your approach to game design and development? Do you use well-known game libraries for a lot of the game mechanics or do you roll your own?
How did you go about populating the game world? Did you create your own game editor?
I was at the Dallas airport recently waiting for my flight to board when a large group of soldiers dressed in desert camoflauge debarked from their plane. As the walked by every single person in the terminal stood up and applauded until the last of them had left. It was great to see everyone honor the soldiers in this way.