Ferdinand Svehla 11 Apr 05

The iPod.

I did not quite, how a digital music player - end even one that is so costly, could be so loved.

Then I played with one and got it - it is simple to use, nice to look, and “just works”.

bryce 11 Apr 05

Continually, the Ruby language.

The buzz surrounding Ruby on Rails was an invitation to try it out, and over and over again, I’m delighted at the elegance of Ruby itself.

I understand the love for Ruby. It enables me to quickly and easily translate my ideas into sophisticated (and improveable) computer programs.

Time and time again, as I’ve discovered the Ruby way to accomplish a given task, I’ve been amazed at its elegance.

Message to those uninitiated to the Ruby world: try it for yourself.

—bryce

geeky 11 Apr 05

Flickr. At first I thought, “Big deal, another photo site on the Internet”. But then I got a new digital camera, tried it out, and now I get it.

Jeroen Mulder 11 Apr 05

Flickr for me as well. Even though I am not using it as much as I’d like, I just can’t wait to start using it extensively. I love it..

Dan Boland 11 Apr 05

The Mac, a few years ago. Now I can’t imagine being stuck with a PC.

kingbenny 11 Apr 05

Fender Telecasters

John Peele 11 Apr 05

Gmail, Flickr, Newsfire, Quicksilver…

Like, all in the last month or so I have went totally ga-ga over these app’s.

Once I ignored all the buzz and actually took the time to evaluate them in light of my own daily processes, they totally started to make sense and improve my life “slightly”

Bob 11 Apr 05

Gmail, certainly. Be it the ads, the @gmail address, or whatever, I held off for a long time. Now I use it for everything.

Joshua Kaufman 11 Apr 05

Something that I try to live by: If the world is going ga-ga over something that initially seems inconsequential to me, then it’s not really inconsequential and I should try to understand it for my own sake.

pete 11 Apr 05

A long long long time ago for me, it was slashdot.

Paul Bellows 11 Apr 05

The iPod mini. Couldn’t figure out why it was so much better than the yellow Sony sports walkman that I’ve gotten by with for so many years. Approximately 25 to be accurate. I’ve sort of got a thing for mix tapes. I like to make a mix tape - or better yet have someone make one for me - and then live with a batch of songs for a week or two.

Then I got the iPod mini. And I realized that it was exactly the same experience, but 100 fold. Plus, no AA batteries and it fits in any pocket that I have.

Sean 11 Apr 05

UML - 9 ways to slice the same scenario depending on what perspective you need. finally get it.

Darren James Harkness 11 Apr 05

For me, it’s this thing we do online; weblogs, livejournals, and even anonymous sites like grouphug. I get why we do it; we’re confessing. We’re confessing our biases (usability here, politics elsewhere), our daily lives (dooce), even our darkest secrets (grouphug).

We’re just like Foucault says we are - confessory animals.

dave 11 Apr 05

newsgator, and really, RSS as a whole. long gone are the days of jumping from site to site in search of fresh news. now my homepage is my newsgator aggregator and i always stay on top of it all.

Backpacker 11 Apr 05

For me it was Backpack. I just didn’t get it when I was invited to test it, but a few pages later, BAM, I see the light. And it’s bright.

Kyle 11 Apr 05

Ruby on Rails.

I kept thinking, “No.. PHP will do you just fine” Then I experimented with it one night, and realized Rails had already done what I was (attempting) to do in PHP - only way better.

indi 11 Apr 05

Women … nah, just kidding. I still don’t have a clue :-)

SMH 12 Apr 05

Ditto Expression Engine. It took a few months for me, but as I’ve delved deeper its planted so many seeds for learning new tools like SQL and CSS. I love it because it lets me continue to be blissfully ignorant about real programming, but still learn bits of code when I need to do something without breaking by back.

Also Adobe InCopy/VersionCue. I thought they were half cooked and not worth the effort for a long time, but just recently its become clear how powerful good versioning is. I’ve never tried CVS or Word Versioning, but for graphic design I’ve seen the future of workflow managment and it’s Version Cue. CS2 will be quite a treat.

Steve, from Co, FLA and now RDU 12 Apr 05

There a line between “Getting it” and just �Getting comfortable� using something?

For me the C programming language.

Steve, from Co, FLA and now RDU 12 Apr 05

Several people are pointing to Ruby.

What IDE are you guys using? Mac, PC or Unix.

For me, the IDE is almost more important then the language itself.

David Heinemeier Hansson 12 Apr 05

The IDE is incredibly important in statically-typed and verbose languages like Java or C#. It’s a lot less important for dynamically-typed and succinct languages like Ruby where code generation isn’t that relevant. So my “IDE” of choice is TextMate (OS X).

Sam Ryan 12 Apr 05

I still don’t really understand why people use Windows. Does that count?

Don Schenck 13 Apr 05

I finally get the idea of “it’s okay to make enemies”.

That sounds harsh at first blush, but think about it: if you go around and are afraid to stir things up and piss off some people, then you really aren’t standing for anything. You’re a wish-washy mush of just-get-along. You’re not being true to yourself.

So, yeah … I finally get “To thine own self, be true”.

Steve, from Co, FLA and now RDU 13 Apr 05

David: Thanks…looking forward to some alone time with Ruby.