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  The Cognitive Benefits Of Chewing Gum

Why do people chew gum? If an anthropologist from Mars ever visited a typical supermarket, they’d be confounded by those shelves near the checkout aisle that display dozens of flavored gum options. Chewing without eating seems like such a ridiculous habit, the oral equivalent of running on a treadmill. And yet, people have been chewing gum for thousands of years, ever since the ancient Greeks began popping wads of mastic tree resin in their mouth to sweeten the breath. Socrates pr...

   Pressure,Gum,Release,Benefits     2011-11-30 11:37:26

  Perl Documentation in Terms of Tasks

The core Perl community—if you care to draw lines around a group of people who use Perl seriously and call that a community—is like many other core F/OSS communities. Real work happens on mailing lists and IRC. I unsubscribed from several mailing lists and deliberately spent as little time on IRC as possible this year, for various uninteresting reasons. (I haven't even made it to the Portland Perl Monger...

   Perl,Documentation,Process     2011-12-27 09:40:09

  Steve Jobs's prediction about wireless,iPad and App Store in 1983

1983 was still a year uncultivated. That year, Apple released the first personal computer Apple Lisa with graphical user interface in the world, TCP/IP was released less than two years, the Internet was basically still a wasteland. General people had few knowledge about computer. Steve Jobs still needed to start with "What is the computer" in his speech. Today, we have become accustomed to social networking, smart phones and mobile Internet, it was really unbelievable at that time. That ye...

   Steve Jobs, record,Apple,prediction     2012-10-03 04:37:17

  A Tiny MySQL++ Tutorial; C++ and MySQL; MySQL++ Example

I wrote a post about how to install MySQL++ and I thought I will write a quick tutorial on how to use it too. This is a very basic MySQL++ program and it’s very self explanatory: #include <mysql++.h> #include <stdlib.h>   using namespace std; using namespace mysqlpp;   int main() { try { Connection conn(false); conn.connect("DB NAME", "DB HOST probably localhost", "DB USER", "DB PASS"); Query query = conn.query(); } catch (BadQuery er...

   C++,Example,MySQL++,Insert,API     2011-09-05 02:12:40

  An Object is not a Hash

Following my article A String is not an Error, I want to bring attention to an issue that similarly applies to JavaScript in general, but has special relevance in the Node.JS environment. The problem boils down to the usage of {} as a data-structure where the keys are supplied by untrusted user input, and the mechanisms that are normally used to assert whether a key exists. Consider the example of a simple blog created with Express. We decide to store blog posts in memory in a {}, indexed ...

   Object,Hash,Node.js,JavaScript     2012-01-19 10:16:10

  Command Line Arguments

Our Hello program still isn’t very general. We can’t change the name we say hello to without editing and recompiling the source code. This may be fine for the programmers, but what if the secretaries want their computers to say Hello to them? (I know. This is a little far-fetched but bear with me. I’m making a point.)What we need is a way to change the name at runtime rather than at compile time. (Runtime is when we type java HelloRusty. Compile time is when w...

   Java,Command line arguments,First elemen     2011-09-30 11:31:54

  Will We Need Teachers Or Algorithms?

Editor’s note: This is Part III of a guest post written by legendary Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures. In Part I, he laid the groundwork by describing how artificial intelligence is a combination of human and computer capabilities In Part II, he discussed how software and mobile technologies can augment and even replace doctors. Now, in Part III, he talks about how technology will sweep through education. In my last post, I ...

   Teacher,Algorithm,Development     2012-01-16 10:17:45

  The price of information

SOMETIMES it takes but a single pebble to start an avalanche. On January 21st Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote a blog post outlining the reasons for his longstanding boycott of research journals published by Elsevier. This firm, which is based in the Netherlands, owns more than 2,000 journals, including such top-ranking titles as Cell and the Lancet. However Dr Gowers, who won the Fields medal, mathematics’s equivalent of a Nobel prize, in 1998,...

   Information,Price,Value,Facebook,Social network     2012-02-07 06:24:53

  Hail the return of native code and the resurgence of C++

Programming language trends come and go. First, Java is the hot new language, then it's Python, then Ruby steals the limelight, then it's back to JavaScript. But the latest language darling is probably the last one anyone expected. Believe it or not, 2011 could be the year of C++. Last week, the latest version of the ISO C++ Standard was approved by unanimous vote. It's the first major revision of the language in 13 years. Now officially known as C++11, the new standard introduces features desig...

   C++,Future,Return back,Popular,Local dev     2011-08-24 02:20:24

  The "C is Efficient" Language Fallacy

I came across an article yesterday about programming languages, which hit on one of my major peeves, so I can't resist responding. The article is at greythumb.org, and it's called Programmer's rant: what should and should not be added to C/C++. It's a variation on the extremely common belief that C and C++ are the best languages to use when you need code to run fast. They're not. They're good at things that need to get very close to the hardware - not in the efficiency sense, but in the...

   C,GCC,Fallacy,Evolvement     2012-01-09 08:54:46

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