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  Writing unit tests for legacy code – an open letter to developers I work with

This is an email I sent today to developers who work with me, it is exactly as I wrote it except for project and developer names which I’ve redacted. Dear Developers, S asked me a difficult question today, and I think the answer (which took me a few minutes to arrive at) is worth sharing with all developers, mainly because many of you will surely face the exact same problem especially in [maintenance and enhancement] projects. By now I think it is crystal clear that one of our non-ne...

   Unit testing,Open letter     2012-02-09 05:39:56

  Why Programmers don’t have a High Social Status?

Up to date there is No single street name for a top programmer or computer scientist in any of the Top 20 most developed countries in the world during the last 60 years. There is no statue built in the center of a major city for a renown programmer or computer scientists. No “Presidential Medal” or “Congressional Gold Medal” has been awarded to a computer scientists or programmer. There is no nationally televised social reward ceremony for computer programmers and scie...

   Propgrammer,Social status,Remember,Achievement     2012-01-04 02:43:05

  How does Class box get 1 million users with only 4 people?

"Class box" is an app which helps students create course plan developed by 4 Chinese. This app was created in 2012. They get over 1 million users with only 4 people. How do they make this? The co-founder of "Class box" Tianfang Li explains this on Zhihu. Here is what he said: About millions of users, in the mobile Internet era what we need to do is just find a good entry point, rapid iteration and with a little luck, a small team or even an independent developer can make millions user level prod...

   class box,team size,sillicon valley     2013-04-03 08:08:21

  How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit

Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote the seminal analysis of management and efficiency in 1911 with The Principles of Scientific Management. He took the first scientific approach towards maximizing efficiency in manufacturing jobs. Time is money. Faster is better. More hours are better. Hours are bullshit Hours are great ways to determine productivity in many industries, but not ours. Working in a startup is a much different experience than working in a factory. You can’t throw more time at a...

   Work,Style,Time,Efficiency,Code,Enforcem     2011-08-19 07:42:32

  Things to Look for in Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7

The .NET Framework 4.7 is the updated version of the .NET Framework 4.6.2.  It can run along with earlier versions of the .NET Framework. On installation it appears as an update for Microsoft Windows under the Installed Updates item in Control Panel. The improvements in the.NET Framework 4.7 includes: High DPI support for Windows Forms applications on Windows 10 Touch support for WPF applications on Windows 10 Enhanced cryptography support Performance improvements .NET Framework Documenta...

   ASP.NET, ASP.NET FRAMEWORK     2017-07-18 05:55:20

  Becoming a Better Developer, Part 1: Making Fans

If you're trying to grow your startup you've come to the right place. Get my 170-page ebook on how to grow a startup and join thousands of self-funded entrepreneurs by subscribing to my newsletter at right. This is the first of what I hope to become an ongoing series about non-technical ways to improve yourself as a developer. Becoming a better developer involves more than learning new technical skills; learning about your company and co-workers will dramatically improve the software y...

   Developer,Tips     2011-06-29 08:38:26

  The 15 Golden Rules of UI design and flow.

Last night a good friend of mine showed me the latest Need for Speed game on the iphone / ipad. Quite an impressive feat of rendering and a relatively good game to boot. However, the front end, wow, a classic case in UI mis-engineering. Loads of stats, pages and pages of bits and pieces to wade through – a classic case of over stimulating the player with lots of decisions they have no business making – stuff that will significantly change their game play experience but being...

   UI design,Game design,Feature     2012-04-05 12:20:18

  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

  The Death of .NET and the Power of Perception

One of my long-standing issues with Microsoft is its inability to control the perceptions surrounding its own products. One of the biggest examples was during the Windows Vista years when, even after the product had been fully patched and worked fine, Apple continued to do a better job to define the image of Windows (compilation of ads here) than Microsoft did, costing Microsoft billions in lost revenue for the millions it saved on a strong advertising campaign. The firm has a history of being p...

   .NET,future,death,bottleneck,development     2011-08-10 03:13:40

  Google engineer: What I learned in the war

Veteran's Day is an ideal time to hear from one of those rare folks who combine corporate and military careers. Dan Cross, a software engineer at Google (GOOG) and a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, took a leave to serve active duty in Afghanistan, came home a year ago, and brought back lessons that he couldn't have learned in business. While he had never seen himself as the military type until a personal tragedy made him reroute his career, he's a better man for it. Cross, 34, is now an...

   Military,Marine,Google,Engineer,Lessons,Teamwork     2011-11-12 10:36:03

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