Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Memory model

  6 Tips to Help You Build a Great Web Application

Web applications are a little more challenging to design than websites. Designers need to anticipate user behavior, make users’ lives easier and make the experience as visually appealing as possible. Many designers tend to do what is easier for them than think about what’s easier for the user. The following is a small list of tips that designers often overlook in the process of designing a web application.1. The Power of a Good TooltipWhen you present your web application to a...

   Web design,Mobile device,Library,Style     2011-11-25 03:02:11

  PHP: a fractal of bad design

Preface I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of technology I don’t like, and that’s really to be expected—programming is a hilariously young discipline, and none of us have the slightest clue what we’re doing. Combine with Sturgeon’s Law, and I have a lifetime’s worth of stuff to gripe about. This is not the same. PHP is not merely awkward to use, or ill-suited for what I want, or suboptimal, or...

   PHP,Design,Analysis     2012-04-11 13:46:57

  Please Steal These webOS Features

When Apple introduced the first iPad in 2010, I bought one immediately. I didn’t know what I’d use it for, but I was sure that I would find some use for it. I never did. I played around with it, wrote some code for it, but eventually stopped using it. I would pick it up from time to time to read something or watch a YouTube movie, but even that was a rare occurrence. I have since picked up an iPad 2, and I’m using it a lot more than the first iPad, but again, I’...

   WebOS,Feature,HP,borrow     2012-02-22 05:45:49

  Programming language choices for an IT manager

A TechRepublic reader named Aaron emailed me and posed excellent questions; here’s an excerpt from his email:“I manage a small IT department and all my skills are self-taught. At times I struggle with complex business initiatives and I believe if I had some programming skills I would be more adept at handling the initiatives. Can you recommend a programming language? Is formal education the best path or have you found that programming can be self-taught?”I’m sure a lot ...

   IT Manager,Programming,Skills,Programming knowledge     2011-10-21 08:37:10

  I hate cut-and-paste

Me, I blame the IDE's.Coding used to be hard. Not because programming itself was overly hard, but mostly because editors absolutely sucked. How much the typical development environment in the 70's and 80's sucked is hard to convey (except for a very lucky few, and those would have likely been using DEC and WANG gear). I got in on the tail end of the punch card era. Punching your own program is lots of fun. Once. And if you drop a deck you get to play with the sorter, which is also lots of fun (o...

   IDE,Editor,Cut and paste,Shortcut,Blame     2011-10-24 11:33:46

  Significance and use of do{...}while(0)

In some Linux kernel and other open source codes, we can see some codes like below: do{ ... }while(0) This code snippet is not a loop, it seems there is no significance of using do...while this way, then why should we use it? In fact, the significance of do{...}while(0) is better than optimizing your code. After some research, we summarize some benefits of it. 1. Help define complex macro to avoid error #define DOSOMETHING()\ foo1();\ foo2(); The me...

   do{...}while(0), optimization     2012-10-21 21:13:22

  What? You tattooed code on your arm?

Since I'm seeing so many hits for this page, and since most of you are developers, I thought it might be worth trying to do a little blatant recruiting If you are an exceptional, passionate front end developer (HTML, CSS, JS) and you want to work in an awesome SCRUM team at a huge multinational company in the South of the Netherlands, please drop me a line (DM my Twitter account).There are also opportunities for developers (front and/or back end) and UNIX gurus at another brilliant com...

   Programmer,Tattoo,Arm,Code     2011-10-10 05:11:29

  The business of software

Inspired by a talk I gave yesterday at the BOS conference. This is long, feel free to skip!My first real job was leading a team that created five massive computer games for the Commodore 64. The games were so big they needed four floppy disks each, and the project was so complex (and the hardware systems so sketchy) that on more than one occasion, smoke started coming out of the drives.Success was a product that didn't crash, start a fire or lead to a nervous breakdown.Writing software...

   Software,Design,Business,Software design     2011-10-29 07:22:09

  HP To Apple: You Win.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a cafe. Around me, there are five people on laptops — four of them are MacBooks. Four other people are using tablets — all four are iPads. Welcome to the Post-PC world. That phrase was one of the first things that jumped to my mind today when I heard the news that HP was not only killing off their TouchPad and Pre webOS-based products, but also trying to spin-off their PC business. The largest PC busine...

   HP,Apple,Palm,Competition,webOs     2011-08-19 07:38:41

  Why Memorizing is Ineffective

The information-age has burst into life, creating a wake of social change. Young people are growing up faster and more sophisticated, as raw information, tailored-entertainment, and branded-marketing are streamed into their rooms. But this technological exposure has not necessarily made them savvier or more capable of handling tomorrow’s challenges.The debates in public education over “school-choice” and standardized testing have missed the far more important issue. The real c...

   Memory,Memorization,Ineffective,Career     2011-11-19 02:13:41

RECENT