Recently there was a question on the forums asking why we encourage usage of HttpRequestMessage<T> / HttpResponseMessage<T> in the signature of a web api implementation. The point made in the post is that if you have an ICalculator contract which your API implements, then it’s violating SOC / inappropriate to have those messages as params and in the contract. The argument is valid when looking at HTTP from the standpoint of an RPC mechanism, which is actually a quite common view.Not of the HTTP authors though. If you read Roy Fielding’s dissertation you will see very ...

I prefer to come into work a little earlier before our 9 a.m. start time in order to leave before 5 p.m. My boss has no problem with my hours, though an older female colleague apparently does. She regularly tells me that this “special” work schedule is damaging my career trajectory and conveys to others that I am a diva. To that I reply, according to whom?There are many workplace assumptions that employees accept without question. Why does the traditional work day start at 9 a.m? Who decided 14 days is the proper amount of annual vacation time? Why do employees need to give a two-w...

The Fourier transform is one of the most fundamental concepts in the information sciences. It’s a method for representing an irregular signal — such as the voltage fluctuations in the wire that connects an MP3 player to a loudspeaker — as a combination of pure frequencies. It’s universal in signal processing, but it can also be used to compress image and audio files, solve differential equations and price stock options, among other things.The reason the Fourier transform is so prevalent is an algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT), devised in the mid-1960...

Get the new year off to a positive start with these design resolutions Wake up. I hope you enjoyed your holiday because it’s a new year and it’s time to get back to work. We did pretty good last year. We started standing up for ourselves. We stopped working for free. We started getting our financial house in order. (Please don’t make me do the contract thing again this year.) We rediscovered typography (again). We learned to think about mobile first. We learned how to make responsive sites. And we stopped compin...

Well.That took rather longer than expected.We have, finally, moved, into the new Fog Creek office at 535 8th Avenue, officially ten months after I started pounding the pavement looking for a replacement for my grandmother's old brownstone where we spent our first few years, working from bedrooms and the garden.Most software managers know what good office space would be like, and they know they don't have it, and can't have it. Office space seems to be the one thing that nobody can get right and nobody can do anything about. There's a ten year lease, and whenever the company moves the last pers...

I've found the following rules over the years developing, teaching and implementing JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. They have specifically been the outline of a workshop on unobtrusive JavaScript for the Paris Web conference 2007 in Paris, France. I hope that they help you understand a bit why it is a good idea to plan and execute your JavaScript in this way. It has helped me deliver products faster, with much higher quality and a lot easier maintenance. 1. Do not make any assumptions (JavaScript, the unreliable helper) Probably the most impo...

Google. It’s one of the most common household words in today’s modern society, and yet for a company that is used by most of us essentially as an algorithm, it tends to trigger a highly emotional response when overheard. It’s a dream job for college students nearing graduation, a highly coveted invitation to lunch by friends and colleagues who work near campus, and the bane of existence for those who produce content for the Internet. For several years, most of the public has seen quick glimpses of the life of those who work at Google: offices filled with primary colors, co...

This morning I had a chat with the students at Google's CAPE program. Since I wrote up what I wanted to say I figured I might as well blog it here. Warning: this is pretty unedited (or else it would never be published :-). I'm posting it in my "personal" blog instead of the "Python history" blog because it mostly touches on my career before Python. Here goes.Have you ever written a computer program? Using which language?HTMLJavascriptJavaPythonC++COther - which?[It turned out the students had used a mixture of Scratch, App Inventor, and Processing. A few students had also used Python or Java.]...