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  The Mature Programmer

1. The Mature Programmer The mature programmer manages their own time and productivity well. The MP knows that maintenance is as much work as the initial writing and code always takes longer than you think. The MP knows that any changes to code can introduce bugs, no matter how seemingly trivial. The MP knows that premature optimization is foolish and dangerous. The MP knows that sexy coding like writing big complex systems from scratch is rarely the best way to go. The MP does not get...

   Mature programmer,MP,Feature,Coding standard,Efficiency     2011-12-05 13:12:00

  Never create Ruby strings longer than 23 characters

Looking at things through a microscopesometimes leads to surprising discoveries Obviously this is an utterly preposterous statement: it’s hard to think of a more ridiculous and esoteric coding requirement. I can just imagine all sorts of amusing conversations with designers and business sponsors: “No… the size of this <input> field should be 23… 24 is just too long!” Or: “We need to explain to users that their subject lines should be les...

   Ruby,Specification,String,Interpreter,Optimization,23     2012-01-05 07:58:07

  Feature: The History Of Mobile Gaming

Mobile phones have come a long way since the unsightly bricks of the 1980s. The sleek handsets of today are a fraction the size of their ancestors, yet exponentially more powerful. While the implications for communication have been profound, there have been many other applications for this technology. Modern devices are capable of supporting increasingly complex software, innovative interfaces and networking capabilities, and the gaming sector has been one of the biggest benefactors of this.Much...

   Game,Mobile,History,Feature, Game on mobile device     2011-10-12 11:44:30

  Programming Achievements: How to Level Up as a Developer

How does a good developer become a great developer?Forget greatness for a moment: How does a decent developer become a good developer?There is no definitive path from Step 1 to Step n. Heck, it's not even clear what Step n is. And as logically-minded developer types, the lack of a well-defined route can make for a daunting journey from novice to master.I've spent a fair bit of time over the last few years bumping up against this conundrum. What's next? How do I go from being a goo...

   Good developer,Great developer,Comparison,Knowledge,Skill,Platform     2011-11-09 02:12:58

  A Month With Scala

Although I’ve played around with Scala for the few months, these efforts largely involved simple scripts and casual reading. It wasn’t until last month that the opportunity to use Scala in a large scale project finally arose and I dove right in. The project was a typical REST based web service built on top of Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, SimpleDB, S3 and Redis*. First off let’s talk about why I chose Scala in the first place. After spending a good deal of my las...

   Scala,Functional,OOP,Java,Iteration     2011-12-10 06:03:23

  Secret Symphony: The Ultimate Guide to Readable Web Typography

Right now, there’s a mathematical symphony happening on your website.Every single one of your readers is subconsciously aware of this symphony, and more important, they are all pre-programmed to respond to it in a particular way.The question is this:Is your site’s symphony pleasing and inviting to your readers, or does it turn them off and make it harder to communicate with them? The Mathematical Symphony of TypographyAs it turns out, this symphony is not unique to websites. You...

   Web design,Typography,Math,Golden rule     2011-12-23 07:48:10

  How I Became a Programmer

I posted a very brief response to a post on HackerNews yesterday challenging the notion that 8 weeks of guided tutelage on Ruby on Rails is not going to produce someone who you might consider a "junior RoR developer." It did not garner many upvotes so I figured that like most conversation on the Internet it faded into the general ambient chatter. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to couple handfuls' worth of emails from around the world asking me what I did, how I did it, an...

   Programmer,Advice,Method,Study     2011-11-24 09:14:50

  Deep inside ARM's new Intel killer

ARM has swung a one-two punch at Intel's plans to muscle in on the smartphone and tablet space that's currently dominated by the plucky chip designers from Cambridge.At press soirées in London and San Francisco on Wednesday, ARM announced both a design for a tiny new chip, the Cortex-A7 MPCore, and a system-on-chip scheme that will marry the new A7 with the much more robust Cortex-A15 MPCore, which was announcedlast September and which should see the light of day next...

   ARM,Killer,Intel,Chipzilla,Performance     2011-10-22 12:55:23

  Performance is a Feature

We've always put a heavy emphasis on performance at Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Not just because we're performance wonks (guilty!), but because we think speed is a competitive advantage. There's plenty of experimental data proving that the slower your website loads and displays, the less people will use it. [Google found that] the page with 10 results took 0.4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took 0.9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a seco...

   Website,Perfomance,Optimization     2011-07-02 01:52:12

  Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code

Twice a month, we revisit some of our readers’ favorite posts from throughout the history of Nettuts+.Code readability is a universal subject in the world of computer programming. It’s one of the first things we learn as developers. This article will detail the fifteen most important best practices when writing readable code.1 - Commenting & DocumentationIDE’s (Integrated Development Environment) have come a long way in the past few years. This made commenting your ...

   Readable,Source Code,Refactor,Comment.OO     2011-04-11 02:20:08

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