The integration between git and Subversion (git-svn) is so well done that several of us have been using git as our interface to all our Subversion repositories. Doing this is fairly simple, but there are some interesting tricks, and so I thought I would share a day in the Viget life with git-svn.

Most buckwheat blini recipes call for yeast and long rising times, and they take hours to make. Our version delivers great buckwheat flavor, and the batter comes together in a snap.

In 1965, two works changed the face of genre publishing forever. Ace Books that year came out with an unauthorized paperback edition of an obscure decade-old fantasy trilogy called The Lord of the Rings, written by a pipe-smoking old Oxford don named J.R.R. Tolkien, and promptly sold hundreds of thousands of copies of it. And the very same year, Chilton Books, a house better known for its line of auto-repair manuals than for its fiction, became the publisher of last resort for Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction novel Dune. While Dune‘s raw sales weren’t initially quite so impressive as those of The Lord of the Rings, it was recognized immediately by science-fiction connoisseurs as the major work it was, winning its year’s Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel (the latter award alongside Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal).

So for this one I have a lot to say that I’ve wanted to say for more than a few years so I’m just jumping straight to my thesis right here at the top of the page: People use Japan as a handwavey scapegoat as a result of a background culture of “wacky Japan” jokes and growing up joking about Japanese video games. They also use it as a catch-all marker of reactionary sentiment partially in reaction to the supposed popularity of anime amongst the resurgent online right wing. The problem with all this is that it almost invariably extends beyond the media itself or even the (deserving) targets of mockery that this stuff is meant to lampoon. Especially in circles that spend a lot of time on nerdy bullshit like video games and TV shows, what arises is a kneejerk response to anything appearing to be of Japanese aesthetic sensibilities and a strange defensive environment where things are on some level expected to be enjoyed in spite of their country of origin. When Japanese media is reactionary, it is said to be a representation of a whole culture, when it isn’t it is said to be a surprising break from it and thus, no matter what, the discussion ends up at the supposed inherent backwards reactionary nature of Japanese popular culture.

This style is actually very close to an actual navigator / driver situation in a car or on a boat. With all the high level commands coming from the navigator and the lower level implementation happening from the driver.

This style of programming is all about increasing communication and collaboration. Verbally communicating code and editor commands is a skill like anything else but it is one that many people have not developed yet. Don't worry, it's pretty easy to gain and most people pick it up the basics in a few hours.

This article focuses on an argument based on the author’s extensive experience with development and pairing. If you’d like to read a summary of scientific studies conducted on pair programming, check out our Scientific Research Into Pairing article.

The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV, it’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more—packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.

A few years ago, entity systems (or component systems) were a hot topic. In particular, Scott Bilas gave a great GDC talk (http://scottbilas.com/files/2002/gdc_san_jose/game_objects_slides.pdf – updated link thanks to @junkdogAP) on using them in the development of Dungeon Siege. The main advantages to entity systems were:

After you've checked for existing SSH keys, you can generate a new SSH key to use for authentication, then add it to the ssh-agent.

If you don't already have an SSH key, you must generate a new SSH key. If you're unsure whether you already have an SSH key, check for existing keys.

If you don't want to reenter your passphrase every time you use your SSH key, you can add your key to the SSH agent, which manages your SSH keys and remembers your passphrase.