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  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

  Native Audio with HTML5

Once upon a time, audio on the web lived primarily in the world of third-party browser plug-ins like Flash, QuickTime and Silverlight. This was not a bad world, but it had its issues.For one, most plug-ins require the user to install them, but not all users are willing (or able) to install them. Also, many players built with these plug-ins are inaccessible, making it difficult for folks who use assistive technologies to access the audio or alternative content.Then there are the front-end design ...

   Audio,HTML5,Built in,Audio tag,Video     2011-10-13 13:04:07

  How I explained MapReduce to my Wife?

Yesterday I gave a presentation at Xebia India office on MapReduce. It really went well and audience was able to understand the concept of MapReduce (as per their feedback). So, I was happy that I did a good job in explaining MapReduce concept to a technical audience (mainly Java programmer, some Flex programmer and few testers). After all the hard work and a great dinner at Xebia India office I reached back my home. My wife (Supriya) asked me “How was your session on …â...

   Java,MapReduce,Java Flex     2011-08-28 04:22:53

  Diving Deeper into HTML5 Offline Browsing

Recently, I published an article on one of the new features in HTML 5 called Offline Browsing  in HTML5 with ApplicationCache.The response to that article was good, and I was asked to expand on some further points including:how to decide on what files to cachethe implications of caching those filesdebugging the ApplicationCacheSo, that’s where this article will start: where the last one finished.  If you haven’t, you should probably read the previous article before this o...

   HTML5,Offline browsing,New breakthrough,Feature     2011-12-20 08:46:06

  The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs

Takeaway: The IT profession and the IT job market are in the midst of seismic changes that are going to shift the focus to three types of jobs. There’s a general anxiety that has settled over much of the IT profession in recent years. It’s a stark contrast to the situation just over a decade ago. At the end of the 1990s, IT pros were the belles of the ball. The IT labor shortage regularly made headlines and IT pros were able to command excellent salar...

   IT,Potential,Consultant,Developer,Projec     2011-07-27 08:46:59

  Do You Make These 5 Database Design Mistakes?

Look, everyone makes mistakes. It’s true. But not all of us have the chance to make mistakes that end up costing millions of dollars in hardware and production support costs. Any one of the following five mistakes listed below will add additional costs to your company. It’s guaranteed. The costs could be hardware related (extra disk space, network bandwidth), which tend to add up quickly. The costs are also support related (bad performance, database re-design, report cre...

   Database design,Mistake,Advice,Data type,Compatibility     2012-01-03 11:25:13

  The Story of W&L: China’s Great Internet Divide

Here’s an introductory quote from The Story of W&L, a tale of China’s great internet divide: China does not have one so-called “national internet,” instead there’s a great divide. It encompasses the elite with ThinkPad laptops and also the grassroots with MTK Shanzhai mobile phones. Our elites are on par with America, while our grassroots are on par with Vietnam. This is the story of W&L, two representatives of China’s great internet divide. T...

   China,Internet divide,Elite,Grassroot,Laptop,Mobile phone     2011-12-05 12:23:56

  Can Your Programming Language Do This?

One day, you're browsing through your code, and you notice two big blocks that look almost exactly the same. In fact, they're exactly the same, except that one block refers to "Spaghetti" and one block refers to "Chocolate Moose." // A trivial example: alert("I'd like some Spaghetti!"); alert("I'd like some Chocolate Moose!"); These examples happen to be in JavaScript, but even if you don't know JavaScript, you should be able to follow along. The repeated code looks wrong, ...

   Programming,Maintainability,Reusable     2011-05-31 07:42:41

  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

  Currying in Python

What is Currying? Currying is like a kind of incremental binding of function arguments. Let’s define a simple function which takes 5 arguments: 1def f(a, b, c, d, e):2    print(a, b, c, d, e) In a language where currying is supported, f is a function which takes one argument (a) and returns a function which takes 4 arguments. This means that f(5) is the following function: 1def g(b, c, d, e):2    f(5, b, c, d, e) We could emulate this behavior the...

   Python,Curring,Binding,Implement     2012-03-19 12:59:10

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