Posts by Allen Cheung
The Overwhelming List Argument
I call it the overwhelming list argument™. It’s a rhetorical device that I see used to try to present something as more grandiose and complicated than it actually is. The technique is simply list out properties about the subject…
Embracing Language Variety
Programming language debates are the religious wars of software development. Much like the xkcd comic on the futility of standardization, attempts to unify or consolidate our existing landscape of languages – and libraries and frameworks – usually just compound the diversity. For…
The Company Guessing Game
Raise your hand if you’ve ever received mysterious emails or LinkedIn messages that resemble this: We’re looking for awesome [engineers / designers / product managers] to join our totally awesome team in [major tech hub]! We need you to help…
Where Companies’ Excellence Matters in Job Hunting
Learn from the best. I held a fruitful discussion a couple of weeks ago with a coding school graduate looking for their first software programming job. They were able to get a few offers from startups (this is San Francisco,…
An Experiment in Adsense Advertising
If you’re not running an ad blocker, you may notice that there are small Google Adsense ads running on this site. After having blogged for 11 years without ads, I had wanted to see what the numbers for online…
Review: Creativity, Inc.
Pixar has the reputation of being a pretty amazing company. Even back in 2002-2003 – when there were “only” a handful of blockbusters to the Pixar name – they were already a legendary firm on the Berkeley campus, one that my…
