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I've spoken with a lot of entrepreneurs around Seattle, who have a misconception that using open source might somehow force them to give away their intellectual property.

Before code can be customizable, it must be clear. But clarity is not enough, if you're going to be using a codebase in multiple places.

Programming is an exercise in understanding a problem. To program effectively, you need to fully understand, in intricate detail, the problem your program is solving. Sometimes as a programmer you don't fully understand the problem until you've wrestled with it a few times in code.

Programming borrows a lot from the construction industry. Many programming terms derive from construction: hacking, builds, development, architecture, scaffolding, frameworks, and dozens of others. But in some ways, programming has an element of power beyond construction.

Continuing on the series, the next item on the list seems to be the mistake I see the most--putting slow code in loops, loading up things that don't need to be loaded, making simple requests expensive.

There are many articles that cover PHP vulnerabilities, but I've run across a lot of programmers and code that seems oblivious to them.

We're hiring programmers, over at Freelock. I've been going through lots code samples to try to identify how experienced and competent a particular developer is. I also do this on a regular basis to evaluate how solid a particular open source project is.

... but are you sure price is the most important thing?

I met Bruce Henry at an MIT Enterprise Forum event last night. Turns out we're both working on software for project management.

We're doing a fair amount of AJAX development these days, and ran into a problem with the REST convention. Thought I'd put my notes here in case somebody else runs into this.

Over the weekend, I upgraded my trusty Thinkpad to the new Beta release of Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon. Thought I would post my notes so far.

The first thing to ask is, why? Web sites have lots of reasons for existence, but for business purposes, we tend to see some combination of four motivations: