There’s a small pile of things on my desk that probably wouldn’t mean much to most people.
A pen. A decoder badge. A pencil. A stack of narrow notepads.
Knowing something exists doesn’t mean I have to own it. And yet there I am, trolling eBay at odd hours for a small object that means far more than its size suggests.
Each one ended up here because it sparked a developer trust memo. If you’ve been around for a while, some of these might look familiar:
- A Fisher Space Pen, which I first heard about from John Musser, founder of ProgrammableWeb, who picked it up from an old Marc Andreessen blog post. I debunked a common myth about it along the way.
- An Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Badge — the original 1935 badge. Ralphie had a 1940 in A Christmas Story, but I wanted the first one. Turns out Ralphie wasn’t the only one getting played. I even built an encoding/decoding site around it.
- A Blackwing 602 pencil, a favorite of animators. Expensive and coveted on eBay. I’ve stuck with the reproduction — it looks just as nice, sharpens to a satisfying long point, and has that skinny eraser. Animators would swear they’re not the same, but the real reason they’re obsessed has nothing to do with the eraser.
- A stack of Reporter’s Notebooks. Not an eBay find — at $2-3 each, the long, narrow pad fits in a jacket or shirt pocket. There’s a reason every professional storyteller keeps one nearby.
In case you think I buy every object I write about, I do not own:
- A Teddy Ruxpin – A torpedo bat – Whatever was “free” on Craigslist
Developer lessons are everywhere — even in the things already sitting on your desk. If you’re having trouble spotting them in your own product, that’s exactly what we help with. Reach out to us.
P.S. That’s right, Ralphie, it’s a crummy commercial.