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  Macro vs. Micro Optimisation

So there's recently been a bit of hype about another Colebourne article: http://blog.joda.org/2011/11/real-life-scala-feedback-from-yammer.html I'd like to respond to a few points he makes. First - You should evaluate Scala and pay attention to its benefits and flaws before adopting it.  Yes, there are flaws to Scala.   Working at typesafe makes you more aware of some of them.  We're actively working to reduce/minimize/get rid of these.   In my opinion, the negat...

   Optimization,Performance,Micro,Macro,Software     2011-11-30 12:04:25

  Unfortunate Python

Python is a wonderful language, but some parts should really have bright WARNING signs all over them. There are features that just can't be used safely and others are that are useful but people tend to use in the wrong ways. This is a rough transcript of the talk I gave at my local Python group on November 15, with some of the audience feed back mixed in. Most of this came from hanging around the Python IRC channel, something I highly recommend. [update 2011-12-19: improved "array" cr...

   Python,Defects,Deprecated methods,Warning     2011-12-20 08:27:36

  An open letter to those who want to start programming

First off, welcome to the fraternity. There aren’t too many people who want to create stuff and solve problems. You are a hacker. You are one of those who wants to do something interesting. “When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability." – WhyTheLuckyStiff Take the words below with a pinch of salt. All these come from me – a bag-and-tag programmer. I love to get things working, rather than sit at something and over-o...

   Programming,Tips     2011-06-09 23:45:45

  Why Software Projects are Terrible and How Not To Fix Them

If you are a good developer and you’ve worked in bad organizations, you often have ideas to improve the process.  The famous Joel Test is a collection of 12 such ideas.  Some of these ideas have universal acceptance within the software industry (say, using source control), while others might be slightly more controversial (TDD).  But for any particular methodology, whether it is universally accepted or only “mostly” accepted, there are a multitude of o...

   Software,Development,Debug,Design     2011-11-21 10:27:05

  An open letter to those who want to start programming

First off, welcome to the fraternity. There aren’t too many people who want to create stuff and solve problems. You are a hacker. You are one of those who wants to do something interesting. “When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability." – WhyTheLuckyStiff Take the words below with a pinch of salt. All these come from me – a bag-and-tag programmer. I love to get things working, rather than sit at something and over-o...

   Tips,Programming,C,C++,Java,Skill,Develo     2011-08-11 11:24:50

  PHP Sucks! But I Like It!

I read a rather interesting post yesterday called PHP: a fractal of bad design. It's been getting a lot of traffic among the PHP community lately because it's rather inflammatory. But to be honest, it does make a lot of really good points. It also makes a lot of mistakes and misses a bigger picture. A Few Mistakes The post makes quite a few mistakes and odd apples to oranges comparisons. Let me point out the major ones that I saw. No Debugger - PHP has xdebug which works quite...

   PHP,Bad design,Like     2012-04-12 06:15:42

  Misunderstanding about Android UI design

A few days ago I wrote a post trying to correct a lot of the inaccurate statements I have seen repeatedly mentioned about how graphics on Android works. This resulted in a lot of nice discussion, but unfortunately has also lead some people to come up with new, novel, and often technically inaccurate complaints about how Android works.These new topics have been more about some fundamental design decisions in Android, and why they are wrong. I’d like to help people better understand ...

   Android,UI,Priority,Background job,Smooth     2011-12-09 02:30:25

  Writing Java codes conforming to coding standard

Recently, I was doing some cleanup to one of my current Java project. I find there are many codes which are not conforming to the Java coding standard. So I list them here and hope that people can improve your codes and write maintainable codes. Format source code and manage imports in Eclipse Eclipse provides functions of auto-formatting and imports management, you can use following shortcuts to use these functions. Ctrl+Shift+F --> Format source code Ctrl+Shift+O -- Manage imports an...

   Java, Code standard,Style     2012-09-18 12:50:28

  JavaScript efficiency catch up

JavaScript is a very flexible language, we can write JavaScript code freely with various styles, different kinds of codes will have different execution efficiency. Here we summarize some tips we get from our development. Efficiency of JavaScript itself JavaScript has execution context chain, closures, prototype inheritance, eval etc. It brings us some magic features, but it also introduces the performance issue, if we don't use them properly, it will affect the codes execution efficiency. 1. Glo...

   JavaScript,efficiency,event delegation,eval     2013-04-02 04:08:46

  Bionic Office

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 rig...

   Work place,Life,Office,Confortable     2012-01-18 09:00:55