Brent Simmons writes on the Anatomy Of A Feature, using his recent work in NetNewsWire to add support for the popular Instapaper service:
It’s tempting to think that adding a feature like this is just about adding the functionality — but there’s a bunch more to it than that.

Here you see the gory, deliberate details that [...]

Crashes suck. When an application experiences a crashing bug, it’s likely to stop running and take with it any unsaved work which you may have had open. Generally speaking, developers who take pride in their code also take pride in ensuring that that it is resistant to crashing.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult for developers to [...]

Brent Simmons writes beautifully about a frustration that most indie software developers can relate to: the payoff proposition. He highlights the all-too-common scenario where a user offers a cash bounty, $50 for instance, to add a particular feature:

“The developers I know would rather rip up $50 bills, long sequences of them, than do something that, [...]

This very post is delivered to your browser or news reader by the famous and fabulous WordPress blogging system. In my work as the developer of MarsEdit, I am exposed to countless blogging options, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. And yet, I stick with WordPress because it strikes a balance of power and [...]