CRYPTOCHAOS

Apple and Nokia settled an IP “misunderstanding” that also resulted in a “Tax”…but it was Nokia that played the T-Man role: Apple paid Nokia more than $600M plus an estimated $11.50 per iPhone sold. Where were the handwringers who now accuse Apple of abusing the patent system when the Nokia settlement took place? Where was the outrage against the “evil”, if hapless, Finnish company? (Amusingly, observers speculate that Nokia has made more money from these IP arrangements than from selling its own Lumia smartphones.)

This pattern is common to all great programmers I know: they're not experts in something as much as experts in becoming experts in something.

The best programming advice I ever got was to spend my entire career becoming educable. And I suggest you do the same.

learning how to learn is more important than learning anything else. If you know how to learn, you'll reduce inertia and emotional investment in any particular niche, so you're likely to make better decisions when choosing what to best work on. Another consequence is that it's best to be continuously introspective with regard to what you're doing versus what you should be doing. Often that gives you unexpected insights. If you're a good calligrapher and grok the emergence of the printing press, the smart move is to be the first font designer.

Couldn't resist...

When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. 

These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts.

“This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done” – Steve Jobs, referring to the soon-to-be-launched Apple Tablet.

I'm beginning too think that Apple is too confident and that worries me. Is this Apple's cool aid moment? Steve was touting the Next Cube as revolutionary at one point... He called a press conference for apple speakers and socks. If this is "the most important thing" he's ever done.... I'm hoping for something great, but beginning to think we'll something overpriced and cool that no one will buy.