Todd Schiller

Machine ✘ Human Intelligence

Blog Posts

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  • A Brief History of Browser Extensibility

    Mar 04, 2021 I posted a history of browser extensibility to Medium. It covers everything from plug-ins and user style sheets to low-code browser extension designers....

  • 7 bite-sized tips for reliable web automation and scraping selectors

    Dec 03, 2020 I posted a guide to writing robust web selectors for Medium. Also see the Hacker News discussion....

  • The PixieBrix Manifesto: Web Customization for the Masses

    Sep 02, 2020 I published the PixieBrix Manifesto on Medium describing the motivation behind starting PixieBrix....

  • Three interviewing mistakes that sabotage your diversity and inclusion initiatives

    Jun 25, 2020 If you're like most business leaders, George Floyd's death and the resulting push for reform have led you to reflect on your own company's approach to diversity and inclusion (D&I). One...

  • Effective Debugging: the Observe-Hypothesize-Test Cycle

    Jan 02, 2019 Have you ever been stumped by a bug? Overwhelmed? Did it take hours, days, or weeks to solve? How did you finally manage to get yourself unstuck? Did you just...

  • The MBA Guide to Software Development

    May 04, 2016 This guide is for executives, managers, and entrepreneurs who want to make better strategic decisions about software. It’s designed to give you a baseline conceptual understanding of the software development process to help...

  • Markov Logic Networks for Fun and Profit: NBA Playoffs Edition

    Apr 19, 2016 Markov Logic Networks (MLNs) are a tool for capturing your beliefs about the world and then calculating the likelihood of outcomes based on those beliefs. Since it's the NBA playoffs, let's use...

  • Combating Information Failure during Software Development

    Feb 16, 2015 Developer productivity is a product of program understanding, a developer's (1) mental model, and (2) access to information for refining that model. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous intuition is actually roughly correct for...

  • 4 Steps to Effective Development Questions and Bug Reports

    Dec 23, 2014 Library use is common but documentation is scarce. Your ability to ascertain information quickly about a library can mean the difference between success and failure in time-sensitive projects. There are two cases where...

  • Making Wrong Code... Wrong

    Dec 08, 2014 Joel Spolsky has a popular post from 2005 on "Making Wrong Code Look Wrong". In this post, I'll address his suggestion to use Hungarian Notation. It turns out we can now do...