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  Code Optimization Techniques for Graphics Processing Units

Books on parallel programming theory often talk about such weird beasts like the PRAM model, a hypothetical hardware that would provide the programmer with a number of processors that is proportional to the input size of the problem at hand. Modern general purpose computers afford only a few processing units; four is currently a reasonable number. This limitation makes the development of highly parallel applications quite difficult to the average computer user. However, the low cost and th...

   Optimazation,GUI,Graphic processing     2011-12-18 01:11:53

  A Better Way to Learn How to Program

Learning how to program can be a nightmare. An aspiring coder has to jump through many unpleasant hoops and mysterious error messages just to get "Hello, World!" printed on the screen. Then, she's left wondering, "OK, now what? How do I actually build something?"As game developers seeing someone struggle through this, we should be screaming, “NOOOOO!” The whole thing reeks of bad game design: a lot of work with no reward, unclear failure cases, advanced features pushed on new players...

   Programming pattern,Game design,Derivati     2011-09-19 13:51:17

  Why does LinkedIn migrate to NodeJS from Ruby?

Node.js, the server-side JavaScript-based software platform used to build scalable network applications, has been all the rage among many developers for the past couple of years. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. Because of these advantages, there are many websites are migrating to Node.js.One of them is LinkedIn. LinkedIn was initially built on Ruby...

   LinkedIn,NodeJS,Ruby     2014-03-21 23:39:25

  Big Corporate Layoffs Hit Shenzhen IT Manufacturing Business

At 11:00 on March 29, 3 employees were ready to jump from Shenzhen Foxconn's longhua building G14. According to witnesses, those 3 employees were negotiating with company regarding the “Foxconn diversion plan”. Liu Kun, Foxconn public speaker, told reporters that many employees are working negatively to resist this plan, but Foxconn does not agree or support their actions in this way. " Company like Foxconn with large-scale labor-intensive manufacturing enterprises in Shenzhen, is f...

   Layoff,Career,China     2013-04-01 06:44:43

  Tips for a better first-time hackathon experience

Here are a few things you can consider. These are by no means the only way to go about hackathons, just what's worked for me.ProjectI strongly strongly recommend doing something you haven't done before. Even if you're going into a hackathon with the intention of winning, trying something new is always fun and will keep you engaged throughout the event. Jump into mobile development, try hardware hacking, write a compiler, whatever; it's always fun to try out new things.Sticking to things you're c...

   hackathon     2014-03-31 07:25:09

  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

  5 tips for developing HTML5 mobile games

Previously at Creat Studios, Vivendi Games Mobile and JAMDAT, amongst others, Scott brings eighteen years of industry experience to MocoSpace. He heads the company's internal game studio.We've all witnessed the growth of mobile and social gaming over the past two years: the two genres have continued to evolve independently, while also coming together and embracing the power of HTML5.Mobile browser-based social games have found an audience and are thriving.This new gaming category draws from the ...

   HTML5,Mobile,Game design,Tips,Mobile dev     2011-09-05 08:15:09

  Python Patterns - An Optimization Anecdote

The other day, a friend asked me a seemingly simple question: what's the best way to convert a list of integers into a string, presuming that the integers are ASCII values. For instance, the list [97, 98, 99] should be converted to the string 'abc'. Let's assume we want to write a function to do this. The first version I came up with was totally straightforward: def f1(list): string = "" for item in list: string = string + chr(item) return string ...

   Python,Optimization,Anecdote,Loopup,ASCII     2011-12-18 10:52:49

  JavaScript as a First Language

At Khan Academy we've been investigating teaching Computer Science to students in some new and interesting ways. The most interesting aspect of which is that we're likely going to be teaching them JavaScript as their first language. We're in a very unique position as we're primarily aiming to teach students who've been through our previous math and science-centric curriculum. Because of this we can create some rather compelling exercises and projects that never would've been feasible other...

   JavaScript,Learning,First language,Inheritence,Prototype     2011-12-23 07:53:45

  Gracefully exiting from console programs in Ruby

Imagine you write a CLI program or a Rake task which loops through some data performing some work on it. You run it and then you remembered something. You’d love to kill the process with ctrl-c, but that will raise an exception somewhere in the loop. What you want is for the iteration to complete and then you want the program to quit. You could handle the Interrupt exception or add some conditions. But how about a cleaner and reusable way? No problem - you can trap signals, which...

   Ruby,Exit,Command window,Console,Graceful     2012-03-14 13:42:16