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  What makes a great IT project manager

Since IT project management is a field in constant flux, there's no one universal definition of a great IT project manager. Still, there are some skills and features that can be easily adapted to any working environment, meeting new organizational needs and consequent challenges. A significant problem is the fact that project manager will mean different things to different people (even within the same organization!). Some say that the greatest IT project managers are those who are able to balanc...

   project management     2015-07-06 02:15:46

  HTTP Streaming and Internet Explorer

In early 2006, Alex Russell posted about a neat hack that the Google Talk team in Gmail use to support Comet in Internet Explorer, a trick which works as far back as IE 5.01. What great news! A reliable way to stream Comet messages to Microsoft’s browsers. If only it were that easy. I have not been alone in the following findings: after connecting the htmlfile ActiveX object as a streaming Comet transport to my Comet server, everything works perfectly for a few messages, but then abruptly...

   IE,Streaming,JavaScript,htmlfile,ActiveX     2011-09-05 04:05:23

  Hackers vs. Coders

Photo Credit: Pranav MistryBeing a good hacker is an invaluable skill. But is being a coder the same as being a hacker? Is it possible that coders are at a creative disadvantage to hackers who don’t know how to code?Here’s a story that helped me see the difference.I was recently invited to mentor at Startup Weekend. On Friday night, we gathered to eat pizza, pitch ideas, create teams and discuss launch plans. At the end of the day, everyone was feeling great about what theyâ...

   Hacker,Coder,Comparison,Innovation     2011-05-11 02:11:09

  PHP sucks (but, some frameworks don't)

I started web development with PHP, and I've decided I've had enough. Why? Keep reading.PHP (the language) sucks. There, I said it. 1029380128301928301823 GlobalsObject system hacked onC extension system sucksDocumentation sucks (read more; no, I'm not drunk)Has a terrible communityAll in all, designed by total idiots. You've probably heard this a ton of times before, but, here it is again. THERE ARE JUST WAY TOO MANY GLOBALS. Why in the world does md5() need to be global? Do you serio...

   PHP,Sucks,Framework,Good,Bad Design     2011-11-20 07:08:16

  A Few Lessons I Learned After Having Failed

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.- Michael JordanIt was mid 2008 and Younique was doing reasonably well. However, I had an itch that I needed to scratch. I wanted to build a mobile advertising platform – think DoubleClickmeets AdMob. At the time the mobile adverti...

   Lesson,Career,Success,Failure,Mobile advertising     2011-10-17 11:21:55

  Go Error Best Practice

Being indulged in Go for quite a while and having implemented web-related programs, grpc interfaces and Operators, I seem to be an advanced beginner now. However, I am still a raw hand in production-environmental debugging, which is cumbersome if done by querying logs or error messages. Imagine the scenario that a full-text search is called when the specific location of the error log is missing. Then what happens when those error logs are not only in one place? Yes, my error logs can no longer h...

   GO ERROR,ERROR HANDLING     2021-10-07 07:38:28

  How to write good requirements

Requirements are pretty ubiquitous in the embedded world. They are used to define tasks, help coordinate large development efforts, and to communicate the behavior of the desired end product between the developers and the customer. When done right, requirements can be very useful. Unfortunately, if you spend much time working in the embedded world you quickly discover that there are a lot of bad requirements. And then when you try to go fix them, you quickly discover that writing good req...

   Requirement gathering,Good requirement     2012-02-18 12:53:15

  On Erlang's Syntax

I first planned to release this text as an appendix entry for Learn You Some Erlang, but considering this feels more like editorial content and not exactly something for a reference text, I decided it would fit better as a blog post. Many newcomers to Erlang manage to understand the syntax and program around it without ever getting used to it. I've read and heard many complaints regarding the syntax and the 'ant turd tokens' (a subjectively funny way to refer to ,, ; and .), how annoying...

   Erlang,Syntax,Error     2011-12-22 08:35:42

  Circumventing browser connection limits for fun and profit

A few days ago, this video hosted by metacafe popped up on digg, explaining how to increase site download times by tweaking your browser settings to increase connection parallelism. To explain why this works, let’s step back a bit to discuss how browsers manage server connections. In building any application, developers are often required to make ‘utilitarian’ choices. Pretentiously paraphrasing Jeremy Bentham, ‘utilitarian’ describes an approach that â...

   HTTP,Concurrent connection limit,Solution,AJAX     2011-12-14 13:01:02

  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