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  Why developers need a Mac

I am by no means an Apple fan. For one thing, I find Windows (and Linux) stable and fast, so you are not going to hear me argue that my computing life was transformed once I made that Switch (with a capital letter). Admittedly that is partly because I am familiar with how to fix and tune Windows and remove foistware, but it is not that hard. For another, I am not an admirer of Apple’s secretive approach, or the fact that most requests for comment from journalists are responded to wi...

   Apple,Mac,Development,iOS,Windows     2011-12-07 03:12:17

  Introduction to GoLang generics and advanced usage

Generics in Go allow you to write code that can work with multiple types of data, without having to write separate versions of the code for each type. This can make your code more flexible and easier to maintain, as you only need to write and test the code once, rather than maintaining multiple versions. To use generics in Go, you first need to define a type parameter, which is a placeholder for the type that the code will work with. For example, you might define a type parameter called "T" like...

   GOLANG,GENERICS     2022-12-17 05:12:21

  App's user value doesn't necessarily bring business value

There is an old saying in Internet world, you can get business value as long as you can achieve user value. Is this statement outdated in mobile Internet era? This statement originated from PC Internet era, but now the time users spend on PC drops and user behavior tends to be stable and conservative. In contrast, people are more willing to stay on mobile devices. The difference between PC and mobile is that users are freely to move around on PC end. People can navigate from one link to another ...

   App,Business value,User value     2013-06-25 10:52:12

  Australian software engineer got asked algorithm question when entering US

The whole world knows that security and background checks get tighten for people to enter US since Donald Trump took office. But have you ever heard about getting algorithm question asked during the immigration check interview while entering United States? Recently an Australian software engineer David Thornton had such an experience when he tried to enter US. (Image from kaytlentravels.wordpress.com) David is a software engineer from Sydney and he is a 24-year-old studied computer sci...

   NEWS,DONALD TRUMP,UNITED STATES     2017-03-04 12:07:54

  How Many C Programs Are There?

If I choose a size S, can you tell me how many valid C programs exist that are no larger than that size? I’m actually interested in the answer — it’ll help me make a point in a paper I’m writing. Shockingly, the Internet (or at least, the part of it that I looked at based on a few searches) does not provide a good answer. Let’s start with a few premises: Since it would be exceedingly difficult to construct the exact answer, we’re looking for a respe...

   C Progra,Number,Statistic,Calculation     2012-02-22 05:18:32

  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

  How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit

Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote the seminal analysis of management and efficiency in 1911 with The Principles of Scientific Management. He took the first scientific approach towards maximizing efficiency in manufacturing jobs. Time is money. Faster is better. More hours are better. Hours are bullshit Hours are great ways to determine productivity in many industries, but not ours. Working in a startup is a much different experience than working in a factory. You can’t throw more time at a...

   Work,Style,Time,Efficiency,Code,Enforcem     2011-08-19 07:42:32

  Select top 3 values from each group in a table with SQL

Yesterday, my friend Liu Bing asked me a question about how to select top 3 values for each person in a database table using SQL. I think this question is interesting and it deserves some thoughts. Here I record down how to solve this issue. Assume we have a table which has two columns, one column contains the names of some people and the other column contains some values related to each person. One person can have more than one value. Each value has a numeric type. The question is we want to se...

   SQL,Correlated query,top 3     2013-05-23 03:21:25

  Not better, but different

The most important feature of Apple products is usability--Simple, aesthetic, easy to use.Their products may not necessarily the most powerful, but they usually are the easiest to use. Following picture show a Mac (left) and a PC(right), which one looks better?Many products are trying to mimic these features, but one problem comes out:It's hard to keep a product simple while providing so many new features.If you continuously add new features to your product,  your product will become more c...

   Market positioning,Product manager     2012-05-19 13:29:20

  Diving Deeper into HTML5 Offline Browsing

Recently, I published an article on one of the new features in HTML 5 called Offline Browsing  in HTML5 with ApplicationCache.The response to that article was good, and I was asked to expand on some further points including:how to decide on what files to cachethe implications of caching those filesdebugging the ApplicationCacheSo, that’s where this article will start: where the last one finished.  If you haven’t, you should probably read the previous article before this o...

   HTML5,Offline browsing,New breakthrough,Feature     2011-12-20 08:46:06

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