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  What It’s Really Like to Work at Google

Google. It’s one of the most common household words in today’s modern society, and yet for a company that is used by most of us essentially as an algorithm, it tends to trigger a highly emotional response when overheard. It’s a dream job for college students nearing graduation, a highly coveted invitation to lunch by friends and colleagues who work near campus, and the bane of existence for those who produce content for the Internet. For several years, most of the publ...

   Google,Work,Life,Workplace     2012-01-18 08:19:00

  Forgotten TODOs: ideas for contributing to open-source projects

I often talk to students that want to contribute to open-source projects, but just don't have an idea what to work on. Here's a tip if you're in a similar situation (e.g. you want to apply for GSOC) : 1 git clone repository_url_of_some_open_source_project target_directory 2 grep -RIn TODO target_directory/* So, find the URL of the repository project you want to contribute to, checkout the repository using git/mercurial/svn and then find all the TODOs in the source code using grep. The -RI...

   Open source,constribution,TODO,participation     2012-03-03 22:30:28

  Why I love Common Lisp and hate Java

“Common what?” is a common reply I get when I mention Common Lisp. Perhaps rightly so, since Common Lisp is not all that common these days. Developed in the sixties, it is one of the oldest programming languages out there. In its heydays it was used mostly for Artificial Intelligence research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the like, and therefore has a lingering association with AI. People not in AI shy away from Lisp. Common Lisp is a powerful and versatile program...

   Lisp,Java,Comparison,Common Lisp     2012-01-30 05:48:16

  Why making a cool project is a good idea for an aspiring software developer

As a software developer, I get to know a lot of other software developers. Many of the software developers I know are either running a startup, working as an early employee for a startup, doing contract jobs for a startup, or dreaming of one day starting a startup. My point is that software developers are very interested in startups, either starting them or working for them. My advice to anyone who’s interested in startups: Before you ever start a startup, try to make at least ...

   Innovation,New business,Start,Tip     2011-08-08 22:55:22

  Round Peg, Square Hole: How to Know If a Developer is a Good Fit for Your Team

Over the last few months, we have been recruiting developers, and we’ve started to get a sense for the type of developer who is a good fit for our team.  These attributes probably apply for developers at most web startups, so I wanted to share them with you. Before I get into it, the most important thing to know is that technical skill is a threshold requirement.  The assumption is that any person who is a fit for our team will have the relevant technical experience t...

   Recruitment,Gire ,Employee,Skill     2011-07-09 09:50:54

  Why Do So Many Gifted Kids Think They Don't like Math?

Why do so many bright and gifted kids think they don't like math? Experience and the reading of lots of research leads me to believe that boredom, under-instruction and poor instruction throughout elementary and middle school lie behind the problem. My best girlfriend since high school is a math teacher north of Philly. We've talked about this a lot. She and I are both aware that our own math instruction lacked a lot. As I give IQ tests, too, I see something that I thought many people woul...

   Bright kids,Math,Hate,Gifted,Boring     2011-12-06 09:00:49

  It takes hard work. Do the hard work.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the idea of simply trying harder with everything I choose to spend my time on. It seems like an elusive thing, the idea of optimal focus and maximum effort. However, I think there is something to be gained from stopping for a moment and considering how focused we are when we do our daily activities. I think two things apply here: single-mindedness and massive effort. To truly excel at something, we need to be very focused. We can...

   Development,Hard work,     2012-01-29 04:40:13

  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

  Ask Bill Gates Anything: Being a Billionaire is Strange, Microsoft Co-Founder Tells Students

How’s the life of a billionaire? “Quite strange,” says Bill Gates, who fielded questions from University of Washington students on Thursday evening as part of a lecture on the future of computing.Gates’ talk, at a packed hall in the UW’s computer science building, focused on some areas where he thinks cheap, powerful computing will have a major impact on society, including education, disease, and robotics.Gates recalled spending time on the UW camp...

   Bill Gate,Billionare,Rich,Advice,UW,Computing     2011-10-28 10:38:34

  We need a programming language for the rest of us

Recently I took on the enormous task of learning Objective-C from the bottom up and I was struck by something I couldn’t shake: this is too hard. An experienced developer might scoff at me for saying that, but it’s true. I’ll be honest about my education, Calculus II was the most math I ever took, I have an advanced degree from Berkeley in Journalism. I am a proficient HTML/CSS developer and can glue enough javascript together to solve almost any problem that has presen...

   Code.Programming,Expectation,Easy-to-use     2011-07-22 02:20:09

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