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  How to tell if this idea is a good idea.

Good Idea or Bad Idea?I’ve got an idea for a product. I’ve talked to some people. I know some people in the industry. I have been cold calling others. The idea is promising. The price point people have agreed with is about where I would like it to be. I’ve shown some mockups around and iterated on them. Now, I feel the need to start writing code because, well, I like writing code. And I’m comfortable writing code.But I see lean people.Steve Blank, Eric ...

   Idea,Good,Bad,Distinguish,Feature,Coding     2011-11-24 09:19:01

  HTML5 photo taking and uploading app implementation

Underthe support of HTML5 standard, Building Web App to take photos is now possible.I will elaborate on how to take photos using Web App, display them on the pageand upload them to the server. 1.     Videostream HTML5 TheMedia Capture API provides the programmable  access to video camera on phones, users canuse the getUserMedia() method to get the video stream provided by video camera.What we need to do is to add a HTML <video> tag and make the videostrea...

   HTML5,Photo taking,Media Capture API ,Implementation     2012-03-15 07:19:49

  Android Tutorial: Creating and Using an SD Card in the Emulator

In a previous post, I mentioned how user-friendly Android is for developers. There’s extensive documentation and information on the architecture, the different components and best practices. However, the documentation has a few blind spots. Many of the tools have little documentation and no usage examples. The information is there, it’s just hidden behind a few layers of Android theory.So I’m going to try and document a few of the basic things that you’ll probabl...

   Android,Emulator,SDCard,Load,Create     2011-04-13 12:08:41

  Don't Overload #nil?

There’s a popular post on Hacker News about writing confident code by, among other things, overloading Object#nil? and returning “null objects” instead of nil itself.DO NOT DO THIS.In Ruby, all objects (except nil itself) coerce to the boolean value true. Your object will be nil and true at the same time. Bad things will happen. Your coworkers will cry. Sad people from around the world will ask bewildering questions on your mailing list.Here’s what happen...

   Ruby,#nil,Overload,Object     2011-11-10 10:50:22

  Chrome to provide native image lazyload support

Previously we have introduced how Medium achieved loading images lazily, basically what they did was using lots of HTML tags and CSSs to change the images at different stage. It needs lots of code to do this. With the high demand of this feature for resource consumption and performance consideration, Chrome is now working on a feature to provide native support for loading images/iframes lazily. This feature is named lazyload. lazyload will allow three values: auto: the default behavior of ...

   CHROME,LAZYLOAD,IMAGE,IFRAME     2018-09-22 23:04:35

  GUI vs CLI: Operation vs Expression

Consider this user interface for a car:The goal of these interfaces is to make you operate something, and operate it efficiently and safely. The grooves and clicks and limits constrain the range of motion and the number of choices. The visual look heavily hints at how to actively use it. They are usually not hard to learn. More importantly, the learning curve plateaus. Once you learn how to drive a car, there’s not much progression after that. Boundedness is ...

   GUI,CLI,Operation,Expression,Programmer,IDE     2011-10-25 10:31:26

  Why Windows?

Since the latest episodes of both Bent and Throw it Against the Wall have seen me mention Windows Phone 7, I think it’s about time I talk about why I like it. I know there’s a lot of scepticism surrounding it. And why not? Most people I know who were considering jumping the Microsoft ship did so in the dark days of Vista, so that’s their last experience with Windows. Anyone who saw their parents working on a Treo back in the nascent days of the Blackberry know the slop...

   Windows,Features,Advantage     2012-02-10 06:22:13

  How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to program?

I usually prescribe the same sequence for anyone who wants to learn programming. It's very theoretical, but it lays a good foundation. It should take three or four months of fulltime study, but programming isn't something you learn overnight.If you can't get through this sequence, you're not going to be able to program, so you might as well give up now.Code, by Charles Petzold.The C Programming Language, K&RThe Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Abelson and Sussman.My rule is...

   Steps,Programming,No experience,No knowledge     2011-11-07 08:27:48

  STOP WRITING GOOD CODE; START WRITING GOOD SOFTWARE

Good software trumps elaborate code. And unfortunately, you can’t usually have both. The real world has deadlines and ship dates. It’s a game of pick two:Ship on timeShip with elaborate codeShip with a fantastic productAlmost always, you should pick the first and the last when you’re building software applications for users (if you’re building API’s or open source libraries for other developers, then it’s a different story). Too often I have seen de...

   Good software,Standard,Good code,Deadline,Tradeoff     2011-11-20 06:56:06

  How NOT to teach a computer language

For the past year or so my wife has been taking online classes to get a computer science degree. For most of her classes she’s done great, she’s been flying through HTML and SQL, even up to the point where she can handle multilevel joins and optimizing through indexes. That was until she hit her vb.net class. I had no idea why she was having problems with a language has easy as vb.net so I started helping her out and find out why she was having so many problems. I’ve also ad...

   Programming,Teach,Book,Grade,Method,Computer     2011-11-06 14:52:13

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