The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
Tom Cargill

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Larry Wall

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Bill Gates

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
Brian W. Kernighan

Once a new technology starts rolling, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
Stewart Brand

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

The hardest part of design … is keeping features out.
Donald Norman

Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.
Ralph Johnson

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger Dijkstra

Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.
Anonymous Preacher

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we’ve finished building it.
Anonymous Consultant

The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead.
Anonymous Support Group Member

Better train people and risk they leave – than do nothing and risk they stay.
Anonymous Technical Trainer

Programming is 10% science, 20% ingenuity, and 70% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.
Anonymous Scientist

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Anonymous Hack Actor

Bad code isn’t bad, its just misunderstood.
Anonymous Code Behaviorist

It is easier to measure something than to understand what you have measured.
Anonymous Analyst

The sooner you get behind in your work, the more time you have to catch up.
Anonymous Scheduler

When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.
Anonymous Linguist

Benchmarks don’t lie, but liars do benchmarks.
Anonymous Tester

Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?
Anonymous Code Monkey

From time to time I’m amazed by how JavaScript is capable these days. Here are 10 libraries to make your images look better and stand out. With the good JavaScript support from Adobe AIR, they might same you some coding for images heavy AIR applications. I’m just wondering if there are a Flex library just does all the tricks?

Loupe.js

Did you ever want to add a lens to your page which will let you zoom into the images. This script will let you do that and much more using two versions of your image.

Instant.js

This javascript lets you add an instant picture effect to your images. You can add border, tilt and shadow to give your images that photo effect which you always wanted.

Edge.js

This javascript can help you in adding nifty edges to your images. You can even mask a second transparent image to generate some nice looking eye candy.

Corner.js

This javascript lets you add effects to your image corners like rounded corners, shadow (both inner and outer), shading etc.

Slided.js

You can add slide frames to your images by using this javascript in your web pages. I am sure it can be useful to some people.

Reflex.js

This javascript enables you to add a cover flow effect to any image on your web page. You can add reflection, tilt angles and also borders to your images.

Curl.js

This is an unobtrusive javascript to add page curl effect to your images and works on all the major web browsers. It can also produce the curl on mouseover where it animates the effect.

Glossy.js

Add a glossy effect to your images to make them stand out. This javascript also allows to add corners, shading and shadow

This javascript allows you to add film strips around your images. You can also add shadow and shine to your film strip edges.

Bevel.js

This javascript simulates a whole bunch of effects! It allows you to add bevels with glow, shading and shine to your images

RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR, released recently after five months of beta testing, is now another gift from Adobe to technical writers. They can reach their end users with a greater appeal using this software, by converting their WebHelp files (created using Adobe RoboHelp 7) to an AIR app. This guarantees a richer user experience adding yet another feather to RoboHelp’s hat against the now obsolete WinHelp.

Help authors can package their content in styles of their choice using templates available with the packager. The auto-update feature allows you to notify/publish updates for all end users, and its enhanced workflow suport lets reviewers within and outside your network to post and publish comments. And then there is context-sensitive help.

You can find more details about these features in this page. Technical writers can turn to this Technical Communications blog for more help; it has further references. Download RoboHelp Packager for Windows here for free. JRE v1.6 or later, and Adobe AIR 1.1 are its pre-requisites.

For the time being, however, RoboHelp Packager supports only U.S. English.

Adobe RoboHelp is a HAT (Help Authoring Tool) used by technical writers to create help files in a number of formats including HTML, XML, DOC, PDF.