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  JavaScript Is Not A Language

Recently people presented arguments for and against using CoffeeScript. I felt the argument against was pointless and obviously wrong, but I couldn't figure out why, and I thought the counterargument for was kind of toothless and irrelevant. I've figured out the real issue.The real argument for CoffeeScript is that JavaScript is not really a language.Years ago I read something which explained, in my opinion, why Lisp has never achieved the mainstream adoption its passionate advocates belie...

   JavaScript,Not a language,CoffeeScript,Model     2011-12-29 08:46:15

  Web programs written in C++ are no big deal

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. She wanted to try putting together a weekend "hackathon" just to see what we could build. It would be one of those fun things where we just start tinkering and see what comes out of it. Somehow, this conversation got to the topic of libraries, programming languages, and frameworks. Then it got a little weird. I guess the current "shiny" thing is still more-or-less Ruby, and particularly when used with Rails. Oh, I suppo...

   C++,Web design,Library,Web app     2012-01-11 11:57:26

  Building A Strong Indie Game Development Team

Are you looking to set up an independent game development team?  You’ll need a team that covers all areas of game development including programming, art, design, sound, project management and business.  You need to pick the right people that can work together for months or even years.  Below are some tips for putting the right team together to increase your chances of success. Roles Game development involves a number of common roles as well as some overlooked ones.  I...

   Software design,Game design,Team work,Pr     2011-08-24 02:16:32

  Smuggling data in pointers

While reading up on The ABA Problem I came across a fantastic hack.  The ABA problem, in a nutshell, results from the inability to atomically access both a pointer and a "marked" bit at the same time (read the wikipedia page).  One fun, but very hackish solution is to "smuggle" data in a pointer.  Example:#include "stdio.h"void * smuggle(void * ptr, int value){  return (void *)( (long long)ptr | (value & 3) );}int recoverData(void * ptr){  return (long long)ptr &...

   C,Pointer,Bit,Data,Atomic,Smuggle     2011-11-14 08:15:59

  On being happy

For the whole past night I lay awake without sleeping a minute, mostly because I am still fully jet-lagged from the move to Europe yesterday. For some reason, the one thought that entered my mind was one about what it means to be happy. Yes, of course, being on an exciting startup journey, there are other goals which are more in the foreground. There is creating a product users love, getting funding or earning enough money to sustain yourself. Whilst I greatly enjoy this product and user fo...

   Happiness,Attitude,Steve Jobs     2011-12-26 08:59:08

  What I learned interviewing with Google

Over the last few weeks I’ve been interviewing with Google for a job doing primarily JavaScript development. I didn’t end up getting the job but I thought I would share the process of interviewing for Google as it was both very exciting and a humbling experience. I can’t reveal everything as I’m under a few NDAs. I’m not going to mention the products or teams that I was interviewing for but you may be able to guess. For those that don’t know me, IÃ...

   Google,Experience,Interview,Algorithm     2012-02-10 06:19:17

  What It’s Really Like to Work at Google

Google. It’s one of the most common household words in today’s modern society, and yet for a company that is used by most of us essentially as an algorithm, it tends to trigger a highly emotional response when overheard. It’s a dream job for college students nearing graduation, a highly coveted invitation to lunch by friends and colleagues who work near campus, and the bane of existence for those who produce content for the Internet. For several years, most of the publ...

   Google,Work,Life,Workplace     2012-01-18 08:19:00

  Including Related Objects in Queries

Every time you hit a mobile network, it slows your users down and introduces another point of failure. So when you're designing your application, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to omit needless requests. Parse's philosophy is to help make this easier by providing standard ways to reduce network requests. One example is caching queries, which lets you avoid resending requests you've already sent. Another example, which we've launched in the most recent version of the...

   Software design,Request,Network load,Resource manage,Mobile     2011-12-07 08:51:56

  Jack Ma : Where are you going during the weekends?

Jack Ma, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba founder and executive chairman, was reported to show up in a night club named Dragon-i in Hong Kong on 17th August night (Beijing Time).  It became the headline in China soon after this news was reported as many people thought it was quite unusual that a successful and super rich business man like him would show up in night clubs. Jack Ma explained on his Weibo(China's Twitter) on this and he posted a question to people as well which ...

   Alibaba, Jack Ma, Night club, Bar, Hong Kong     2015-08-23 02:42:59

   Opinion: The Elusive 'Quick Iteration' - Tips for Indie Devs

[In this reprinted #altdevblogaday-opinion piece, WB Games/Kindling Games' Kristen Bornemann offers independent developers advice on iterating and shipping their projects as fast as possible.] From agile and scrum to extreme programming, everyone's trying to nail down what it takes to iterate on products quickly and efficiently. There are a lot of methodologies that you can employ to guide you through shipping products. But today, I'll be talking specifically about video games and how, as a...

   Game,Electronic,Efficient,Development me     2011-08-15 07:41:47

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