The Curious Engineer

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Patrick Dubroy's blog

dubroy.com/blog

programming, usability & interaction design

Software / engineering practiceCompilersEssays / personal

’10’15’20’25
Posts
152 from 12 Oct 2006 to 23 May 2026
Posting
now and then (5 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://dubroy.com/blog/rss.xml

2026 4

  1. Fast is better than slow
  2. devlog: compatibility packages
  3. Look for what's true
  4. De-Googling

2025 4

  1. devlog: garbage collection is useful
  2. Reflections on writing a book
  3. Make it happen
  4. Five coding hats

2024 8

  1. One way to do applied research
  2. Memories of some fantastic internships
  3. Playing like a kid again
  4. Taking learning seriously
  5. Bytecode VMs in surprising places
  6. Two little interpreters
  7. Casual programming
  8. Thoughts on Scratch

2023 1

  1. Cold-blooded software

2022 5

  1. The influence of Self
  2. Core dumps, feedback loops, and a game of telephone
  3. Getting things done (in small increments)
  4. Handling user input with structured concurrency
  5. Three ways of handling user input

2021 2

  1. Ohm v16
  2. Visualizing Packrat Parsing

2020 1

  1. Sketches from CDG

2017 1

  1. Task-Transforming Representations

2016 4

  1. What is State?
  2. The interesting thing about React
  3. What I've been up to at CDG
  4. Things I Read and Enjoyed in 2015

2014 1

  1. Sketch Alignment Guides

2012 2

  1. Design Principles for Metaprogramming
  2. Goodbye WordPress

2011 4

  1. Google I/O: Memory Management for Android Apps
  2. Smarter Notifications with Locale for Android
  3. Making Notifications Better
  4. So You Want to Install a Python Package

2010 4

  1. Browser Bits: My mini-blog on browser UX
  2. My CHI2010 Talk: A Study of Tabbed Browsing
  3. Presenting at CHI 2010
  4. An In-Depth Look at the User Experience of iPhone Safari

2009 10

  1. Thesis Update and Multi-Touch BumpTop
  2. Aaand...we're back.
  3. How many tabs do people use? (Now with real data!)
  4. 301 Redirect for the search usability win!
  5. Hire me for programming or interaction work
  6. Are short methods actually worse?
  7. tlogger: Capture click-stream web browsing logs
  8. My Tab Study: Apropos Links
  9. My Talk at Mozilla
  10. Sketchbook: Using Ubiquity with a mouse

2008 30

  1. Could visualization help make better software?
  2. Sketchbook: Firefox session restore
  3. Links: Windows 7, visualizing complexity, Cruz
  4. Removing debris from your interface
  5. Google Chrome: Usability Impressions
  6. Blogging is the hardest "conversation" I've ever had
  7. Wrestling with Tabs
  8. Actually, this IS your father's text editor
  9. The future of tabbed browsing
  10. Things to check out
  11. One fine day at meshU
  12. Sugar leaves the One Laptop per Child nest
  13. This is my brain on Twitter
  14. If this is Object Calisthenics, I think I'll stay on the couch
  15. Firefox's awesomebar: a command-line for web apps
  16. What I've been up to: freehand drawing on the OLPC laptop
  17. On wiki markup languages
  18. The *real* reason you want a multiple monitor setup
  19. Spring Fever: Links for March 14, 2008
  20. If you can't say anything nice...
  21. Design Transformations
  22. A Hierarchy of Needs for Code
  23. Scribd's iPaper and the fragile web
  24. Why desktop search will give way to personal information search
  25. Designed for the Canadian Winter
  26. Multiple-Monitor Productivity: Fact or Fiction?
  27. What interaction programming is, and why it matters
  28. Links for January 15th
  29. The innovative interface of the OLPC laptop
  30. 5 ways to radically change computers (for the better)

2007 65

  1. Links for December 4th
  2. Design *for* our brains, not *like* our brains
  3. More downloading difficulties
  4. Firefox 3 Beta 1: Usability impressions
  5. Usability problems downloading from web apps
  6. Firefox 3 Awesomeness
  7. Mozilla Prism and the future of application development
  8. There are no little boxes: Everything is deeply intertwingled
  9. Information Revolution
  10. Greatest Misses: Popular posts from the last year
  11. Happy birthday to me
  12. Software needs editors
  13. Ontario election: Safari users out of luck
  14. Two outta three ain't bad
  15. Jono DiCarlo's Top 3 Humane Open-source Applications
  16. Mundane usability problems
  17. White night, dark station
  18. Wacom's wacky new logo
  19. Graphics for summarizing customer reviews
  20. Uploading and downloading are seams in the web experience
  21. Usability mistakes with radio buttons
  22. Inspiration for HCI and usability practitioners
  23. Making up my mind about oversimplification
  24. As simple as possible, and then some
  25. Weirdness when minimizing Finder
  26. Revenge of the Nerds: Cool interfaces for electronic music
  27. Network issues
  28. Rethinking overlapping windows
  29. Erlang and the future of programming
  30. Oversimplification is confusing (or, Don't ask stupid questions)
  31. Avoiding the mailto: trap
  32. Data visualization roundup
  33. Yay for rectangular selection! (But just this once)
  34. Sometimes it's okay to be sucky
  35. Why is installing software on a Mac so complicated?
  36. Fun with clickwrap licenses
  37. On Quality Code: Less is More
  38. Do you use spatial organization?
  39. Python: Making easy things easy
  40. Icons by Picasso
  41. Sub-pixel font rendering: it ain't just about the looks
  42. Donald Norman on the design of intelligent machines
  43. Answers Are Easy, Questions Are Hard
  44. Why I'm Not Doing a Paper Prototype
  45. Multi-touch in the home
  46. Personal Information Beyond the Desktop
  47. Constipated Metaphors
  48. Google is not enough
  49. The dark side of tabbed browsing
  50. Riding the Rocket
  51. Doing Today's Job with Yesterday's Tools
  52. Warming up to OpenID
  53. What happens to our information when we die?
  54. Blake Ross takes on information management
  55. Users don't know what they want
  56. The past and future of the WIMP interfaces
  57. Yahoo! Pipes: Plumbing for the semantic web
  58. Back to the Future Part II
  59. Personal Information Management: A change is gonna come
  60. University of Calgary Interactions Lab
  61. Silos and Architecture Astronauts
  62. Enso: Back to the future
  63. iPhone is the acid test for convergence
  64. On static and dynamic typing, and corn tortillas
  65. 24 Hours in NYC, Part 2: MoMA Design Collection

2006 6

  1. 24 Hours in NYC, Part 1: ITP Winter Show 2006
  2. Hitting the sweet spot
  3. Why can't my RSS play with your email?
  4. Why I Miss Static Typing
  5. The Unbearable Weight of Choice
  6. Useful Awkwardness