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  Why PHP Was a Ghetto

Note: I wrote this over a month ago, but decided not to publish it until now.I was talking with the Co-founder of a pretty cool start-up in DUMBO the other day about why the non-PHP development world generally has such disdain for PHP and the community surrounding it. He brought up an interesting point that stuck with me, largely because I hadn’t heard it before.If you’re unaware of the usual beef most developers have with PHP, it tends to revolve around:Ug...

   PHP,Framework,MVC     2011-05-06 00:35:37

  Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development Management

If anyone knows the joys and sorrows of managing software development projects, it would be Linus Torvalds, creator of the world's most popular open-source software program: the Linux operating system. For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS. He and I sat down to talk about effective techniques in running large-scale distributed programming teams – and the things that don’t work, too.Torvalds says there are...

   Linux,Software development,Linus Tonalds     2011-09-28 09:16:02

  The Anatomy of a Perfect Web Site

Many sites on the web are good. They are well-designed, clear, have great information architecture and are easy to navigate. Often, web designers emphasize the “design” part too much, and neglect the other equally important things. However, there are sites which aren’t that aesthetically pleasing, but still are the best sites in the world. They may look like a big, sad bag of wrestling underwear on the outside, but their underlying user experience is really, really refine...

   Website,web design,Anatomy,Interaction,Feature     2011-11-08 09:00:34

  Fear of Ignorance

This past week, I was interviewing a candidate for a VP role along with two of our engineering leads. Everyone in the room excluding myself was classically “technical” – they could write code, had experience solving hard software problems and a background in computer science. I wrote my last line of PHP in 2004, and it had to be rewritten by a real programmer within 6 months.During the interview, we had the following exchange (due to an imperfect memory, I’ll ...

   Leader,Team,Technical,Leadership,Ignorence     2011-11-21 10:03:03

  Top Ten Tips for Correct C++ Coding

Brian Overland, long-time Microsoft veteran and author of C++ Without Fear: A Beginner's Guide That Makes You Feel Smart, 2nd Edition, shares 10 of his most hard-earned, time-saving insights from decades of writing and debugging C++ code.My first introduction to the C family of languages was decades ago (yes, I know this dates me horribly). Later I learned C++. I wish someone back then had steered me around the most obvious potholes; it might have saved me hundreds of frustrating hours.I ca...

   C++,Tips,Top,Ten,Magic number,Integer di     2011-09-03 10:58:35

  Vim: revisited

I’ve had an off/on relationship with Vim for the past many years. Before, I never felt like we understood each other properly. Vim is almost useless without plugins and some essential settings in .vimrc, but fiddling with all the knobs and installing all the plugins that I thought I needed was a process that in the end stretched out from few hours to weeks, months even; and it the end it just caused frustration instead of making me a happier coder. Recently, I decided to give Vim ano...

   Linux,Editor,Vim,Setup,Quick guideline     2011-12-12 07:55:27

  Currying in Python

What is Currying? Currying is like a kind of incremental binding of function arguments. Let’s define a simple function which takes 5 arguments: 1def f(a, b, c, d, e):2    print(a, b, c, d, e) In a language where currying is supported, f is a function which takes one argument (a) and returns a function which takes 4 arguments. This means that f(5) is the following function: 1def g(b, c, d, e):2    f(5, b, c, d, e) We could emulate this behavior the...

   Python,Curring,Binding,Implement     2012-03-19 12:59:10

  Ruby is beautiful (but I’m moving to Python)

The Ruby language is beautiful. And I think it deserves to break free from the Web. I think the future of Ruby is firmly stuck in Web development, though, so I’m going to invest in a new language for data analysis, at least for now. This is a look at the fantastic language I came to from Java and a look at a possible candidate. (Update: I’ve since written a followup.)Java to RubySix years ago, I added Ruby to my technical arsenal. I learned C++ and Java in high school, and I p...

   Ruby,Java,Python,Comparison,Advantage,Ruby vs Python     2011-11-01 07:18:11

  Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity.  It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain and suffering.  This post aspires to be README.txt for your career as a young engineer.  The goal is to make you happy, by filling in the gaps in your education regarding how the “real world” actually works.  ...

   Career,Programmer,Advice,Low level,Development     2011-10-29 07:09:23

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