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  Please Steal These webOS Features

When Apple introduced the first iPad in 2010, I bought one immediately. I didn’t know what I’d use it for, but I was sure that I would find some use for it. I never did. I played around with it, wrote some code for it, but eventually stopped using it. I would pick it up from time to time to read something or watch a YouTube movie, but even that was a rare occurrence. I have since picked up an iPad 2, and I’m using it a lot more than the first iPad, but again, I’...

   WebOS,Feature,HP,borrow     2012-02-22 05:45:49

  In College, Working Hard to Learn High School Material

In June, Desiree Smith was graduated from Murry Bergtraum High. Her grades were in the 90s, she said, and she had passed the four state Regents exams. Since enrolling last month at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, Ms. Smith, 19, has come to realize that graduating from a New York City public high school is not the same as learning. She failed all three placement tests for LaGuardia and is now taking remediation in reading, writing and math. So are Nikita Thomas, ofBedford Stuyves...

   Education,College,High school,Material,Knowledge transfer     2011-10-24 11:51:39

  What do programmers really do?

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. â€“ PicassoMany people (including my mother-in-law) think that computers are becoming so smart that programmers will be no longer needed in the near future. Other people think that programmers are geniuses who constantly solve sophisticated math puzzles in front of their monitors. Even many programmers don’t have clear idea what they do.In this post I want to provide some explanation to uninformed people what programmers rea...

   Programmer,Work,Computer     2011-05-20 11:49:32

  #46 – Why software sucks

No one makes bad software on purpose. No benevolent programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people and making them cry. Bad software, or bad anything, happens because making things is hard, making good things doubly so. The three things that make it difficult are: Possessing the diverse skills needed not to suck.Understanding who you’re making the thing for.Orchestrating the interplay of skills, egos and constraints over the course of...

   Software design,Sucks,Software industry     2012-03-19 13:10:37

  Kicking ass together: How to improve coding skills as a group

Over the last year and a half, I have worked with a small group of students and staff to create an excellent online learning community at Mendicant University. Unfortunately, because Mendicant is something that we’re intentionally scaling at a very slow pace, we won’t directly reach as many people as we’d like to any time soon. In this post, I’ve collected some of the things that I think contribute to making Mendicant University a great place to learn. I’d love...

   Code skill,Group,Improvement,Efficiency     2012-01-31 23:59:33

  Prototypes and Object Orientation

David Chisnall takes a look at the two dominant paradigms in object-oriented languages (classes and prototypes) and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each.Two terms are quite often confused when describing programming languages:class-based and object-oriented:Simula was the first class-based language. It provided classes (actually implemented using closures) as a means of encapsulating abstract data types.Smalltalk was the first object-oriented language. It provided a...

   Prototype,OOP,Differential,Comparison,Mo     2011-09-02 11:51:26

  insertAdjacentHTML() Enables Faster HTML Snippet Injection

In Firefox 8, we’ve added support for insertAdjacentHTML(). It’s an ancient feature of Internet Explorer that has recently been formalized in HTML5 and then spun out into the DOM Parsing specification. The bad news is that Firefox is the last major browser to implement this feature. The good news is that since other major browsers implement it already, you can start using it unconditionally as soon as the Firefox 8 update has been rolled out to users.Basic Usage...

   InsertAjacentHTML,Firefox,HTML5,DOM     2011-11-10 10:52:00

  The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear?

"I will learn it when I need it"! I've heard that phrase a lot over the years; it seems like a highly pragmatic attitude to foster when you're in an industry as fast-paced as software development. On some level it actually IS quite pragmatic, but on another level I am annoyed by the phrase. It has become a mantra for our whole industry which hasn't changed said industry for the better. The problem is this, in the guise of sounding like a wise and practical developer, people use it as an exc...

   Tips, Programming, Expert     2011-04-06 11:07:43

  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

  FUCK PASSWORDS

I'm so tired of passwords. So, so, so tired. Most people don't understand this. Most people use the same password everywhere. Most people can just mechanically type out password3 in every password box, smirking to themselves at how clever they are, because who would ever guess 3 instead of 1? I don't do that. Let me tell you what i do. I generate a different password for every service, based on a convoluted master password and the name of the thing. I do this because it's what you're...

   Security,Password,Random generation,Hard to remember     2011-12-05 11:32:45