Visual Studio 2012 Supports Debugging Optimized Code

Bruce Dawson reveals this great feature. A year ago this would have been incredibly exciting to me. Even now it’s great news for native developers using Visual Studio:

It turns out that Microsoft shipped this feature in Visual Studio 2012, but forgot to tell anyone. This could be the most important improvement to Visual Studio in years but it s been almost top-secret.

Microsoft really should be shouting about this. Debugging Optimized Code – New in Visual Studio 2012.

What’s really amazing is that this isn’t considered a make-or-break product feature. IIRC Watcom C++ did this around 1996. Visual Studio survived. Watcom didn’t.

How Do Good Ideas Spread?

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change.

What makes a successful company? People and culture must be at or near the top of the list. Sometimes company cultures need fixing. If you’ve ever been involved in an effort to change culture you’ll know that it’s hard. Really hard. Atul Gawande has a great article on changing social norms in the world at large in the context of medicine. Culture is a social problem. Forming it and changing it is as low tech as you can get.

… people follow the lead of other people they know and trust when they decide whether to take it up. Every change requires effort, and the decision to make that effort is a social process.

Atul Gawande’s Slow Ideas

Great Advice on Writing from Matt Gemmell

Your problem is that, well, you’re reading a fucking list of writing tips instead of actually writing. We talked about this. That’s your issue, genius.

Matt Gemmell’s Writing Tips.