I used to also wait for all the data before I tried things like this. Then due to "reasons" I actually started meditation, daily, for just 10 minutes. I've now been doing it for 3 years and I have no data to give you, but the effects on me are subtle yet profound. If you can spare 10 minutes a day you still won't have any data, but you'll have an answer.
I've learned to keep a log of all the work I do (so I can search for information on request or if I want to recall something months or even years later), but I just use a specially formatted vim file (that has references to other scripts etc. if needed). More recently I've started a personal version of this to keep me on track with my own app projects. I love the look'n'feel of a physical journal, but it's just not practical in the long run for the work I do.
I guess this would be useful in the case of an apocalypse scenario involving mass EM pulses (assuming anyone is still around to build new computers with OCR to reload the code). Better use good acid-fee paper stored at near-vacuum though.
Absolutely! Confronting the people who are abusing the system is much more effective and doesn't affect the group morale (the general email would effectively punish everyone because of those few). Managers should, y'know, manage.
I've taken apart a couple of discarded pianos. The saddest part is cutting the wires with a wire cutter (watch it, they whip outward) - the sound is so mournful and haunting.
One indicator to me that an article would be a time-waster (to me) is the "numbered lists" (10 ways to do X etc.) By avoiding those, my quality to waster article ratio has increased.
I wish it were so, but though I hate to be cynical, this has been going on (for me) since the early 90's (back then Microsoft was the one everyone connected to) so I doubt that anything is going to change.
"It's the 'finishing the back of the drawer' - you can argue that people will never see it and it's very hard to, in any rational sense, describe why it's important but it just seems important. It's a way that you demonstrate that you care for the people that you are making these products for."
That quote probably sums up why so many other companies fail at doing what Apple does with hardware.
"Apple under Tim Cook will embrace efficiency to an even greater degree" - I've never seen a company that starts adding project managers to a process that is deemed "inefficient" but profitable that has led to a long-term improvement. In the short-term things look better with all the new "documentation" of process, but it devolves into managers meeting for the meetings themselves, and the HiPPO syndrome (Highest Paid Person's Opinion).
I fully agree here. A couple of years ago, when I went on interviews at startups, they were all using nosql db's and were proud of it. More recently, I've been interviewing at startups that are now bigger, need to mine the data that they've collected over the last few years, and now are migrating off of nosql db's to rdbms' (or creating strange amalgams of the 2). I did see this coming, but it was very hard to make them understand back when it was the coolest thing.
My main concern is that people learn a bit of the easy stuff, then extrapolate that coding is easy therefore inexperienced and cheap programmers are all that's needed to complete a project. Quality of code will drop, as will salaries (even for the experienced).
Maybe more "gatherings" and less conferences are the way to go (invite a speaker once you have an interested group) - kind of like the way these BSD guys in NYC do it: http://www.nycbug.org/