Posts by Allen Cheung
Not Adjusting Expectations
I typically spend a few minutes every Sunday to go through my finances. This means checking up on credit card statements, ensuring I have enough money in bank accounts to pay for upcoming bills, and estimating whether I should put…
Unlearning Keyboard Shortcuts
Muscle memory is a powerful tool. I’m currently typing on a Kinesis Advantage keyboard. It’s yet another ergonomic keyboard, one those major difference – which contributes to its steeper learning curve – is in its emphasis on using the thumb…
Software Eating Software Engineering
A few days ago, a question was asked on Hacker News: What is the future of the programmer? I had briefly agonized about this before, in context of contrasting how I came into computing in my childhood and what analog…
4 Years Later, a Slower MacBook Upgrade
I went out and got the new MacBook to try for a week or two. It is quite a wonder of hardware and industrial design: thin and light, cools completely passively (so no noisy fans), with a fairly good retina…
The Unique Properties of Photos
Another month, another great photos service. Google Photos is the latest service to one-up its competition, and there’s a lot to like about it: both the effectively unlimited storage[1] and the machine-intelligent search play to Google’…
Not All Engineering is Equal
I call myself a software engineer, and I consider what I do a type of engineering. There are arguments against such a characterization, and some corresponding defense for how software development can legitimately compare to other engineering disciplines. Somehow software…
