Edit Week 1
This is the first occurrence of an institution on this blog that I’m going to call Edit Week and hope to repeat every few months. As you might have figured out, the idea is that this week, rather than writing a new post, I go back and improve previous posts. A common issue with blogs is that posts are written and then left to sit for years without ever getting updated; meanwhile, related posts are written on the blog but people don’t find them because they’re not linked from older posts, the author learns more about the topic and doesn’t realize his blog now asserts opinions he no longer agrees with or contains flat-out wrong information, and the world changes and links break or information is no longer relevant. The idea behind Edit Week is to set aside some time to read back through old posts and focus on these maintenance issues.
So you can tell I’m not just shirking my duties and ignoring my standard schedule, and because it may be enlightening to see what I’ve decided to change, I will always publish an Edit Week post explaining that it’s Edit Week and describing the most important changes. This Edit Week is still early in Control-Alt-Backspace’s history, so I didn’t find much inaccurate or changed information yet, but I did find a bit in the keyboard shortcuts article, since I wrote that without having access to a Mac to test on!
Here’s what changed this week:
- An Introduction to Keyboard Shortcuts
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- Tested and corrected some information on Mac keyboard shortcuts.
- Added info on creating custom keyboard shortcuts on Macs.
- Starting Off With A Backup
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- Added more suggestions for testing backups and louder arguments for why this is necessary.
- Getting Your Filesystem Hierarchy Less Wrong
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- Added a reference link explaining refactoring, recognizing this is probably not a familiar term to most non-software developers.
- Fixed a formatting glitch in one of the hierarchy examples.
- Added a link and teaser for the next post in the series.
- Filesystem Links: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
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- Clarified the explanation of the definition of “filesystem” in this article (slightly different from the one used throughout most of the series)
- Fixed an error in one of the hierarchy examples (the text referenced a file that was absent in the example).
- The Art of Naming Files: Mechanical Considerations
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- Added more details on what can go wrong when using characters forbidden in Windows filenames on Mac or Linux.
- Why and How to Focus on Requirements
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- Added a suggestion to write down your requirements rather than trying to keep them in your head, and explained the benefits.
- Spaced Repetition
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- Fixed broken link to the follow-up post.
- Scripting as Effective Communication
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- Added several additional external and internal links for context.
- Managing Temporary Files
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- Added screenshots showing the somewhat obscure process of creating an environment variable on Windows.
- A Blizzard Postmortem, Part 2: Analysis
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- Added several additional external and internal links for context.
- Added more thoughts on why simply calling yourself stupid and leaving it at that is unhelpful and a missed opportunity.
Found an error or have a suggestion for improvement of your own? Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and hit the “let me know” link in the footer. Nothing is too small to point out; in my opinion, typos as small as bad spacing are an issue worthy of the tiny amount of time it takes to correct them.
