But You Did Not Persuade Me

For the most part, I don't disagree with Jeff Atwood's most recent post. On a factual level, he's correct. When coding, it's more important to market than to code. In fact, for anything you want to do, from plumbing to politics, it's more important to convince people that you do a good job than to do a good job.

But that's not a good thing. Everyone shouldn't have to be a marketer. Specialization is a powerful thing, and it'd be nice if that could be applied to marketing too.

I don't know how or even if such a change is possible. And I'll admit I'm biased by my sub-par social skills. But it still seems like something to strive for.

Also, I disagree with his interpretation of that scene. The unavoidable truth it exposes is that Idi Aman is crazy and incapable of recognizing good advice.

"Alright" is Alright

Pedantic prescriptivists claim that "alright" is not a word. That it's merely a misspelling of "all right". I disagree. I claim that "alright" is a word with a meaning distinct from "all right".

The distinction is similar to the differences between "already" and "all ready", and "all together" and "altogether". In each case, when "all" is a separate word it means just that, all. If a group of something is all ready, then all the members of that group are ready. As a single word, the "al" doesn't mean anything separate from the rest of the word.

It's the same with "all right" and "alright". "All right" means everything is correct. "Alright" is synonymous with OK.

Here's another blog on the same issue. Oddly, it says that "alright" isn't a word, and then goes on to describe the difference between the two.