The truth about cars waxes on lyrical about how the Chevrolet Cruze is a class leader in the United States for its segment and how it is the first General Motors small car that can actually compete with the cars from Japan, Korea, Germany, etc. However the end comes with this snark;

The answer is simple: this is a Daewoo. My direct, repeated questions to GM personnel regarding the Cruze's Korean ancestry were answered honestly but with perhaps too-scrupulous attention to detail. I was repeatedly told that "the architecture was engineered in Germany", and I was repeatedly told about the "global nature" of the engineering, but the plain fact of the matter is that the Daewoo Lacetti was largely engineered, styled, and developed by Daewoo in Korea. It was then modified in some detail to become the Chevrolet Cruze. It's a Korean car, and if it isn't quite a Korean-market transplant like the Aveo, it's very far from being a European design like the Ford Focus or VW Jetta.

The issue of American engineering for the Cruze hardly came up. In the modern era, GM seems to source its electronics in China, its major systems in Europe, and its brainpower in Korea. It's smart business -- TTAC readers know about China's market and the limitless potential there -- but for those of us who wanted an all-American small car to draw a line in the sand, there's only disappointment.

The reality is that engineering skills are now a global enterprise and nationalism is no longer a guiding directive for the achievement of quality of good engineering. Whether the car was engineered in Korea, Germany, California, Australia or what, the engineering outcome these days is of increasing quality.

The days of Detroit being the leaders in automotive technology are gone. And the nationalistic price that is placed on cars is also long gone. Half of the Holden is a Chevy V8 and drivetrain. When the Pontiac GTO was shipped to America it had 50% American parts in it. The Chevrolet Camaro is on an Australian designed platform. The nature of automotive engineering due to its high costs and skill sets is a global enterprise.

Holding on to the nationalistic or nativist part of it is a waste. It is of a time that has gone. Governments encourage it too by subsidizing manufacturing which in many instances would be better done overseas. The building of the Cruze in Australia is a good example of that. It is a leading seller with the cars being imported from Korea. There is little need to build them in Australia as well. (reply)

The tech sites have plenty of articles describing these kinds of experiences with the Apple Store and approval process for the iPhone and iPad. This poor guy did everything they wanted, got it up there finally, and then had it removed almost immediately.

That isn't isolated. There has been a lot more of these kinds of issues that make me wary of creating anything for the app store. I am just a hobbyist Joe Schmoe who would do it for fun or extra cash. However, if you are someone who is doing it as a business or as a primary source of income, I can understand being paralyzed in fear of whether that would happen after all the hours, effort and money that has gone into creating the app;

Apple's App Store was a constant source of stress in the development process. Every time another story of Apple randomly booting an app from the store came out, the whole team quaked. The idea that we could do all this work and then Apple could deny the app, or even keep it in limbo forever, made us second- or third-guess every design decision. "Will this pixel hurt our chances of getting accepted?"

Apple is killing the creativity of their developers with the uncertainty of their App store policies. We made it through okay, thankfully, but I can only wonder about how much more interesting the store would be if Apple had given developers a clear list of rules, and promised to stick to it. The Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt people have about the App Store was entirely optional - Apple brought it on itself, and it's not going away.

Apple has also removed apps from the store if it clashes with an app they want to bring out, or a direction they are going. A young Australian developer fell afoul of this recently. The web remains a safer and more open environment. I am willing to bet the web will move to accommodate the applications as well and HTML6 will be full of gesturability for the mobile devices that are based on touch screens. (reply)

At the beginning of the year i set myself the task of shipping two applications a year. It is too easy to start something and never finish it. The hardest thing is to put something into production. That means the final spit and polish that differentiates a project in an IDE and a software application that has end users.

I have an application that is only missing the backend. The UI and all the browser level interactions are complete. It is now going through phases where I am trying to reduce the UI to an ever small series of interactions. I am a big fan of minimalism as an aesthetic ideal. Additionally my experiences in software engineering and dealing with QA is that the simpler the software the less the quality issues. The screenshot below is the end of today's effort at minimalism.

Below is an earlier and fussier iteration of the user interface. Because of the larger number of buttons, the javascript was more complex to take into account all the interactions.

In the fussier iteration it was fun doing the CSS3 stuff that made it look nice. But in the end minimalism won out and the large CSS3 timer was replaced by a light grey counter. (reply)

The monsoons are back in Phoenix. They have not been dumping much rain so far but the storms have been large as they have been circling the city. (reply)

The tax cuts from the Bush Era that are due to expire were heavily targeted. My wife and I are both white collar professionals who do very well for ourselves and don't have the financial burden of children.

Judging by the graph the tax cuts were for people that draw in more annual income than we do. It is only above half a million a year in income that the Bush tax cuts start working. Ouch. I can't drum up any enthusiasm for them being continued. (reply)

Via What we do is secret; a Japanese house with a glass garage wall between the house and the garage. It is a nice clean touch but probably impractical.

The garage is always a messy place. Due to it being seen from the kitchen, there is likely more impetus to keep it as clean, uncluttered, minimalist and modernist as the rest of the house.

In Phoenix the garage can often get to 120F. It is boiling in the garage. Not sure I would want a glass wall radiating that heat into the house in a mid-July desert heatwave. (reply)

One of the benefits of functional tests is that it removes that lost area of software development when you just swim in over design and adding stuff because you think you need it. There comes a point when the software just becomes a morass of stuff and the development becomes aimless. It is easy to fall into and it is usually where I drop what I am developing because I know I am without direction.

Functional tests being written first stop that negative area. I know the lean and test driven people argue from a point of waste and you aren't going to need it. But that aimless area is dangerous area as that is where most of the extraneous code and over design come from.

It is an important discipline to create functional tests, if not first, at least after the initial design is stubbed. It keeps focus on achieving that outcome. Unit tests are not as important at that stage of development as they are the rigor within the code. Functional tests stop wasted software development. (reply)