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Until today Beeminder had a fundamental design flaw that was baked in from literally day one. The first line of code for what would become Beeminder was to draw a line on a graph in Mathematica from a target weight to a goal... »
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The Anti-Magic Principle
Wednesday, May 27th, 2020
Being a fan of overly provocative titles, I was tempted to title this “If-Statements Considered Harmful”. Meaning that it’s so tempting to add little bits of intelligence to your app to make it do the sensible thing in different circumstances. And that’s usually perfectly correct but the Anti-Magic Principle... »
X-Treme Nerd Interlude: Computing and Visualizing Level Curves of the Days-To-Derailment Function for the Upcoming Yellow Brick Half-Plane New World Order
Thursday, May 14th, 2020
For background on the Yellow Brick Half-Plane that a normal human could conceivably care about, see our previous post on how we’re killing the custom lane widths feature. This post is strictly for abnormal humans, and/or, more realistically, for ourselves, because math... »
How To Write Functional Specs
Thursday, March 12th, 2020
We’re assuming here that you’re already conceptually on board with writing specs. If you’re skeptical, Joel Spolsky will set you straight! Here’s my own mini-pitch for specs: Writing... »
Death to Auto-Widening Yellow Brick Roads, Part 2
Monday, February 17th, 2020
If you’re just tuning in, and if you care about this for pragmatic rather than philosophical reasons, you’ll want to start with (or stick with) our announcement that we have fully killed off auto-widening yellow brick roads. This is the part where we philosophize about why... »
Beeminder Buzz Press Roundup 2019
Tuesday, January 7th, 2020
Redqueening, Inbox Zero, Backlogs, and Fluid Dynamics
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019
If you’re a fan of Mark Forster (as we certainly are) then this whole post amounts to giving a name — “redqueening” — to step 2 of his »
Motivational Archetypes
Wednesday, September 11th, 2019
Which motivational archetype do you most identify with: Philosopher — better understand the universe, live the life of the mind Hedonist — go on adventures, have wild romances Caregiver — have meaningful relationships, raise children Creator — make beautiful things, make enduring things Politician — lead and influence people, improve the world I would call myself a Philosopher, then Creator/Politician, followed... »
Pareto Dominating The Pledge Cap UI For Goal Creation
Friday, August 9th, 2019
This is part 3 of a 3-part blog series! Previously we defined Pareto dominance and what that means for software, and then we made our case for and committed to the »
The Pareto Dominance Principle for Apps and Websites
Tuesday, July 30th, 2019
This is part 2 in a 3-part series. Part 1 defined Pareto dominance and Pareto-efficient software. I have some advice that now feels (to me, subjectively) too... »