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  On Employers, Portfolios, Commitment, and Cake

You might know from experience that planning for a wedding is no simple feat. In the months leading up to our wedding, my then fiancé and I spent countless hours planning and making sure that no detail was overlooked. Among our top priorities was finding a skilled baker to create a delicious and beautiful cake. On the recommendation of a friend, we considered a baker named Jennifer. We read her "culinary resume." We were impressed by her references and experience, and our initial conve...

   Career,Employer,Cake,Commitment     2012-02-17 07:48:19

  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

  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

  Thoughts on Running an Open Source Project

I spoke in the unconference at PHPUK last week, on running an open source project. I thought I would collect together my thoughts into one place before I lose the scratty piece of paper I wrote them down on. I'm not sure I'm the right person to be giving advice exactly, but these are the things that, having been project lead on joind.in for a while, I think are important. Community I love it when people share their code, just make something and publish it, but to my mind it isn't an open...

   Open source,Management,Readme,Community     2012-03-06 05:25:27

  Static Code Analysis

The most important thing I have done as a programmer in recent years is to aggressively pursue static code analysis.  Even more valuable than the hundreds of serious bugs I have prevented with it is the change in mindset about the way I view software reliability and code quality.It is important to say right up front that quality isn’t everything, and acknowledging it isn’t some sort of moral failing.  Value is what you are trying to produce, and quality is only one a...

   Static code,Analysis,Quality,Microsoft 360,Value     2011-12-24 06:50:18

  HP To Apple: You Win.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a cafe. Around me, there are five people on laptops — four of them are MacBooks. Four other people are using tablets — all four are iPads. Welcome to the Post-PC world. That phrase was one of the first things that jumped to my mind today when I heard the news that HP was not only killing off their TouchPad and Pre webOS-based products, but also trying to spin-off their PC business. The largest PC busine...

   HP,Apple,Palm,Competition,webOs     2011-08-19 07:38:41

  Fast tracking android app development with optimum delivery.

Most Android developers nowadays are faced with challenges of delivering optimum feature/product in due time. Most developers believe working hard will ensure their success in getting this actionable result, howbeit, working smart is the ground to get this done.   working smart brings productivity while working too hard might resolve to frustration. In this article, we will be looking at some basic tips to working smart as an android developer in order to: Fasten up your nex...

       2017-09-11 17:41:40

  Five-minute Multimethods in Python

So what are multimethods? I'll give you my own definition, as I've come to understand them: a function that has multiple versions, distinguished by the type of the arguments. (Some people go beyond this and also allow versions distinguished by the value of the arguments; I'm not addressing this here.) As a very simple example, let's suppose we have a function that we want to define for two ints, two floats, or two strings. Of course, we could define it as follows: def foo(a, b): if...

   Python,Multimethod,Argument list,Version,Overloadding     2011-12-07 08:41:03

  JavaScript finite state machine

Finite state machine is a very useful design model, it can be used to simulate many events in the world. In short, finite state machine has three features: Number of states is finite At any moment, one object can only be in one state In some condition, it will transfer from one state to another state In JavaScript, finite state machine can be applied in many places. For example, one menu element on a webpage. When the mouse hovers on the menu, the menu will show up, while the mouse moves away...

   JavaScript,Finite state machine,State     2013-09-02 11:00:57

  An experience of fixing a memory-corruption bug

During the last 4 months, I was disturbed by a memory-corruption bug, and this bug will cause program crash. Until last Monday, I found the root cause and fixed it. This debug process is a difficult but memorable experience, so I will share it in this article.   My program works as a SMS Hub. When it receives a SMS, it will allocate a structure in heap memory like this: typedef struct { ...... int *a[8]; ...... } info; After processing the SMS, the program will free the m...

   c, debug, unix, solaris, multi-thread     2014-05-04 03:52:43

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