These monome devices, described as “adaptable, minimalist interfaces”, let you hack a grid of lights. The extreme design reduction liberates the device’s perceived potential. Adding any extra features to the device would be like replacing a blank canvas with a coloring book. The device is built by two people from the future, brian crabtree and kelli cain, where capitalization has long been regarded as superfluous decoration.
Moreover, an API is not about programming, data structures, or algorithms—an API is a user interface, just as much as a GUI. The user at the using end of the API is a programmer—that is, a human being.
– Michi Henning, API Design Matters
[via Jwatt]
I have a love / hate relationship with A / B tests. Leaning too hard on them to make design decisions can make for very anemic process. It encourages an incremental, guess-and-check approach that feels like a task better suited for an automaton. Even when isolating one variable, the results mainly speak to “what” had the effect on behavior, rather than the “why”. I’d rather be solving problems and taking bigger strokes. But you simply can’t argue with its place in the toolbelt, especially when seeing some of the results on ABTests.com
Simon Willison is genuinely excited:
That technology is Ryan Dahl’s Node. It’s the most exciting new project I’ve come across in quite a while.
At first glance, Node looks like yet another take on the idea of server-side JavaScript, but it’s a lot more interesting than that. It builds on JavaScript’s excellent support for event-based programming and uses it to create something that truly plays to the strengths of the language.
Beautiful new theme from Khoi Vinh and Allan Cole. It’s full-featured and comes equipped with everything you’d expect in a theme (although probably don’t need). The best part, which I’ll undoubtably be stealing for some future project, is the presentation of the archives in the right-most sidebar.