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  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

  Why Software Projects are Terrible and How Not To Fix Them

If you are a good developer and you’ve worked in bad organizations, you often have ideas to improve the process.  The famous Joel Test is a collection of 12 such ideas.  Some of these ideas have universal acceptance within the software industry (say, using source control), while others might be slightly more controversial (TDD).  But for any particular methodology, whether it is universally accepted or only “mostly” accepted, there are a multitude of o...

   Software,Development,Debug,Design     2011-11-21 10:27:05

  10 New Year’s resolutions for designers

Get the new year off to a positive start with these design resolutions Wake up. I hope you enjoyed your holiday because it’s a new year and it’s time to get back to work. We did pretty good last year. We started standing up for ourselves. We stopped working for free. We started getting our financial house in order. (Please don’t make me do the contract thing again this year.) We rediscovered typography ...

   Designer,Chanllenge,2012,New UI     2012-01-18 09:11:02

  It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs

The majority of wealth is now concentrated at the top of the social ladder. This is particularly true in the US, and the gap is widening every year. This, I believe, is because of efficiency, not China. Today the best ideas can efficiently and quickly propagate worldwide, and everyone can efficiently find them and buy them. This makes the owners of these ideas filthy rich, and those ideas that are not the best, can hardly survive. It’s not just transfer of information that is fast; wealth...

   China,Efficiency,Job,Opportunity,Wealth     2011-10-23 11:43:18

  Steve Jobs attacks Android just for show?

Steve Jobs has a famous statement which says Android is a stolen product. What does Google CEO Larry Page think about this statement? Recently, Page said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that Apple hates Android just for show. He believes people should not look only to the competitions, but should focus on the potential cooperation opportunities to make the world better.The following is overview of the interview:Q: When you took over as CEO, one of your goals was to take the cle...

   Steve Jobs,Android,Larry Page     2012-04-08 08:30:33

  Preparing for the real costs of cloud computing

Computerworld - At a cloud computing conference in New York in June, a number of speakers pointed out that the cloud is moving past the hype stage and is beginning to deliver tangible benefits to organizations. These improvements include increased flexibility and agility. But moving to the cloud can also mean added costs, some of which might be unexpected, according to IT executives whose organizations have implemented cloud services or are considering them. While these types of costs ...

   Cloud computing,Cost,Chanllenges,Platfor     2011-08-23 07:48:24

  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

  Why Software Is Eating The World

This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the...

   software,quota,internet world,eat up     2011-08-22 12:06:40

  Signs that you're a bad programmer

1. Inability to reason about codeReasoning about code means being able to follow the execution path ("running the program in your head") while knowing what the goal of the code is.SymptomsThe presence of "voodoo code", or code that has no effect on the goal of the program but is diligently maintained anyway (such as initializing variables that are never used, calling functions that are irrelevant to the goal, producing output that is not used, etc.)Executing idempotent functions multiple times (...

   Sign,Programmer,Characteristics,Knowledge,Skill     2011-10-20 08:56:16

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