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SEARCH KEYWORD -- Complicated

  Application vs Database Programming

A few years ago, I had a problem.  A database routine for processing bulk payments for LedgerSMB that was humming along in my test cases was failing when tested under load with real data prior to implementation.  Some testing showed that while it ran fine with small numbers of inputs, it eventually slowed way down as the number of inputs rose.  Andrew Sullivan, who was also on the project through a different company, suggested it was something called a "cache miss" because I...

   Application Programming,Database programming,Comparison,Difference     2012-03-04 12:08:35

  One interesting story about Chinese software development

I have once seen an interesting complaint written by one foreigner about Beijing South Railway Station (China) on foursquare. It says: "There is simply no way to buy a ticket at the machine unless you have a Chinese ID. What the hell they have English interface for then?" Apparently,the foreigner cannot buy ticket because he doesn’t have Chinese ID but there still presents an English interface for foreigners on the vending machine. Because of my profession, I find this awkward situation w...

   Software design,User experience,Importance     2012-03-26 14:42:50

  CSS3 animation vs CSS3 transition

Both CSS3 animation and CSS3 transition can be used to transition an element in a webpage. They can be used to transition some CSS properties within a given period of time. They have many similarities. They do have a few differences as well. So an user needs to understand the differences between them in order to better use them in different scenarios. First, let's see an example on how to change the width of a div from 100px to 200px within 2 seconds when hovering on it. With CSS3 animation , th...

   CSS3 animation,CSS3 transition, Difference     2015-06-15 08:46:39

  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

  HeartBleed: Should C be blamed for the HeartBleed bug?

There is a discussion about the security of applications written in C on Hacker News recently after the report of HeartBleed bug in OpenSSL. In this discussion, some people are saying that the applications written in C are unsafe. It seems all or most of the faults should be laid on C. I think this is biased. The language itself should not be blamed.Safety is a relative term for programming languages. No language is absolutely safe. We claim some languages like Java and C# are safer than C/C++ b...

   C,HeartBleed,Analysis,Code review     2014-04-14 03:52:55

  Why Building a Mobile App is Hard

Kent Nguyen has a great article about how building iOS apps takes a lot of work. And, here at Parse, we agree. Making a well-designed app is not a trivial task. Many non-developers hugely underestimate the amount of sweat and tears that goes into a single app. The big component that is overlooked and that Kent stresses is the server component. An app is not an island. Users expect their apps to richly interact with the internet. This means you need to worry about developing code on servers, com...

   Mobile app,Hard,Chanllenges,Platform     2012-02-01 04:45:45

  How deep should unit test go?

There is a question on Stackoverflow which says "How deep are your unit tests?". It is asked by a guy named John Nolan. The question is not too new, but what catches me is the Best Answer given by Kent Beck, who is the creator of Extreme programming(XP) and Test Driven Development(TDD). Let's look at the question first. The thing I've found about TDD is that its takes time to get your tests set up and being naturally lazy I always want to write as little code as possible. The first thing I seem ...

   Unit test,TDD,XP     2012-09-03 10:11:27

  Learn from Haskell - Functional, Reusable JavaScript

Learn You a Haskell: For Great Good? For the last couple months I have been learning Haskell. Because there are so many unfamiliar concepts, it feels like learning to program all over again. At i.TV, we write a lot of JavaScript (node.js and front end). While many functional/haskell paradigms don’t translate, there are a few techniques that JS can benefit from. There are Haskell library functions for everything. At first I thought this was just because it was mature, but then I notice...

   JavaScript,Haskell,Functional,Reusability,Feature     2012-02-21 05:30:51

  The Singular Secret of the Rockstar Programmer

Before all the laws of software, before the purpose of software, before the science of software design itself, there is a singular fact that determines the success or failure of a software developer. This fact makes the difference between the senior engineer who can seem to pick up new languages in a day and the junior developer who struggles for ten years just to get a paycheck, programming other people’s designs and never improving enough to get a promotion. It differentiates the poor...

   Programming,Tip,Great developer,Rockstar     2011-08-07 23:42:09

  The Programmer Salary Taboo

Salary is an interesting topic. It's certainly one everyone has an opinion on. It's also a uniquely taboo subject among members of the working public. Since I'm about a month away from being done with University and entering the programmer workforce, I've taken to asking my classmates what type of starting salaries they're getting at their first jobs. The first thing I discovered is that not everybody is very comfortable with this question, and many companies are even less so. Microsoft requests...

   Salary,IT company,Taboo,Google,Microsoft     2011-04-18 00:19:03

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