Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Effort

  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

  We’re working our young people too hard

Yesterday, I shared an anecdote involving a school I once attended with a list. This anecdote eventually became the basis for a blog post. Traffic was fairly normal for the first few hours until it found its way onto hackernews.Then it exploded.The comments on both the original blog post and the post on hackernews filled almost immediately with opinionated hackers, teachers and students sharing similar experiences, discussing the problem and figuring out what should be done about it.Repeate...

   Education,Science,Teacher,Student,Exam     2011-11-17 08:38:01

  Why Every Professional Should Consider Blogging

I often argue that professionals should share their knowledge online via blogging. The catch is that virtually anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort, and blogging is not an exception to this statement. So before committing your energy to such an endeavor, you may rightfully stop and wonder what’s in it for you. Is blogging really worth it? In this article, I briefly illustrate some of the main benefits that directly derive from running a technical blog. 1. Blogging can impr...

   Developer,Blogging,Share knowledge     2012-01-29 04:30:07

  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

  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

  10 Secrets of Successful Leaders

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” But, becoming a great leader isn’t easy. Successfully maneuvering a team through the ups and downs of starting a new business can be one of the greatest challenges a small-business owner faces.Leadership is one of the areas that many entrepreneurs tend to overlook, according leadership coach John C. Maxwell, whose books...

   Leader,Skill,Calm,Trust,Involvement     2011-11-03 03:36:56

  Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

What you do when compiling can ruin your life. And not just when compiling, but when waiting for any short computer operation to finish. That time is ridiculously tiny compared to the rest of your workday, yet it can have a huge impact on your productivity and well-being overall. Yes, that’s a big fat claim. And by the way, this article is not just about coders or programmers. It’s about any smart people working with computers. And there will be pictures! Let’s rock and ro...

   Programming.Net,ASP.NET,Platform     2012-02-23 07:14:11

  Prototypes in JavaScript

Following on from his previous article, David Chisnall explores JavaScript as an example of prototype-based object orientation. In this article, he shows how it's possible to implement more complex object models on top of this simple abstraction.My previous article, Prototypes and Object Orientation, considered the differences between class-based and prototype-based object orientation. In this article, we'll look in a bit more detail at the workings of the JavaScript object model, since it'...

   JavaScript,Prototype,Object oriented,Obj     2011-09-02 11:44:12

  Stop Designing Pages And Start Designing Flows

For designers, it’s easy to jump right into the design phase of a website before giving the user experience the consideration it deserves. Too often, we prematurely turn our focus to page design and information architecture, when we should focus on the user flows that need to be supported by our designs. It’s time to make the user flows a bigger priority in our design process. Design flows that are tied to clear objectives allow us to create a ...

   Web design,Paradigm,Advice,User experience,Flow     2012-01-05 08:16:18

RECENT