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SEARCH KEYWORD -- 2011

  Why do so many technical recruiters suck?

It’s Tuesday, I get a call from an unknown number.  There is a little hesitation, but I finally pick it up.  My number is listed on my business card and I feel like I should get these calls unless I am in a meeting.- Hi, is this Mike?- Yes, speaking….- Hi Mike!  How are you today?- Fine…- I am calling from XYZ Co, and we deal with recruiting and staff augmentation.  I was wondering if you are looking for software developers.We are in San Francisco and itâ...

   Recruitment,HR,Sucks,Tech recruiter     2011-11-13 08:22:02

  Why Flash didn’t work out on mobile devices

The debate over whether supporting the Adobe Flash plug-in on mobile devices is a feature or not is over. Last night, ZDNet got hold of a leaked Adobe announcement: It’s abandoning its work on Flash for mobile. It’s not a huge surprise that it came to this, since Adobe had been struggling to optimize the performance, and the tide has been turning toward HTML5.From the Adobe announcement ZDNet published:Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Fl...

   Flash,HTML5,Advantage,Merit,Mobile device,Support     2011-11-15 03:15:12

  Design Secrets for Engineers

If you are a designer like me, you must be asked on a regular basis to “make it look pretty.” The request can stroke your designer ego, making you feel like a design rockstar with super powers to make this world a more beautiful place. This is especially true at startups, where you are one of the few, maybe the only designer there. However, it can also be really annoying–almost degrading at times. Thoughts like “why the hell can’t engineers do this on their o...

   Design,UI,pretty,engineer,designer font     2011-10-24 11:18:25

  Lasagna Code

Anyone who claims to be even remotely versed in computer science knows what “spaghetti code” is. That type of code still sadly exists. But today we also have, for lack of a better term — and sticking to the pasta metaphor — “lasagna code”.Lasagna Code is layer upon layer of abstractions, objects and other meaningless misdirections that result in bloated, hard to maintain code all in the name of “clarity”. It drives me nuts to see how badly some c...

   Lasagna Code,Analysis,spaghetti code     2011-11-16 03:12:03

  Mozilla releases an online editing tool --Popcorn Maker

Firefox developer Mozilla has been sparing no effort to promote the development of HTML5 and Web App They officially released a product: Popcorn Maker 1.0. It lets people edit video online and produce video with interactive features. Popcorn Maker video editing website page is similar to the ordinary video editing software, but the interface is simple and easy-to-use. You can edit the video content with simple select and drop and drag options, including inserting text, links, maps, Twitter infor...

   Popcorn Maker,Mozilla,Video editing     2012-11-13 11:50:31

  Stuff Everyone Should Do (part 2): Coding Standards

Another thing that we did at Google that I thought was surprisingly effective and useful was strict coding standards. Before my time at Google, I was sure that coding standards were pointless. I had absolutely no doubt that they were the kind of thing that petty bureaucrats waste time writing and then use to hassle people who are actually productive. I was seriously wrong. At Google, I could look at any piece of code, anywhere in Google's codebase, and I could read it. The fact that I wa...

   Programming,Code standards,Rules,Stringe     2011-08-15 07:33:02

  Faster than C

Judging the performance of programming languages, usually C is called the leader, though Fortran is often faster. New programming languages commonly use C as their reference and they are really proud to be only so much slower than C. Few language designer try to beat C. What does it take for a language to be faster than C? Better Aliasing Information Aliasing describes the fact that two references might point to the same memory location. For example, consider the canonical memory copy: void...

   C,Performance,Speed,Fortran,Criteria     2012-03-25 09:12:23

  Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

I got a call from a friend of a friend the other night. It was a fellow with whom I’d talked 11 months ago about a project he and his partner were looking to start. We established then that I wasn’t the guy for him, that I was likely too expensive for their big-dreams, small-means budget. Fast forward to present day: their project is still not launched, it’s still not right. They’ve paid for something between 600-700 hours of development with a firm in India, an...

   Indian programmer,Outsourcing,Poor quality,Low cost     2011-12-05 12:58:26

  Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

I got a call from a friend of a friend the other night. It was a fellow with whom I’d talked 11 months ago about a project he and his partner were looking to start. We established then that I wasn’t the guy for him, that I was likely too expensive for their big-dreams, small-means budget. Fast forward to present day: their project is still not launched, it’s still not right. They’ve paid for something between 600-700 hours of development with a firm in India, an...

   Indian programmer,Outsourcing,Poor quality,Low cost     2011-12-05 13:00:13

  Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

I got a call from a friend of a friend the other night. It was a fellow with whom I’d talked 11 months ago about a project he and his partner were looking to start. We established then that I wasn’t the guy for him, that I was likely too expensive for their big-dreams, small-means budget. Fast forward to present day: their project is still not launched, it’s still not right. They’ve paid for something between 600-700 hours of development with a firm in India, an...

   Indian programmer,Outsourcing,Poor quality,Low cost     2011-12-05 13:00:04

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