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  Transparency in Cloud Services

37signals recently launched public “Uptime Reports” for their applications (announcement). The reaction on Hacker News was rather tepid, but I think it’s a positive development, and I applaud 37signals for stepping forward. Reliability of cloud applications is a real concern, and there’s not nearly enough hard data out there. Not all products are equally reliable; even within 37signals, the new reports show a 3:1 variation in downtime across apps. That said, ...

   Cloud,Transapency,37signals,Announcement     2012-01-10 07:24:02

  Eight C++ programming mistakes the compiler won’t catch

C++ is a complex language, full of subtle traps for the unwary. There is an almost infinite number of ways to screw things up. Fortunately, modern compilers are pretty good at detecting a large number of these cases and notifying the programmer via compile errors or warnings. Ultimately, any error that is compiler-detectable becomes a non-issue if properly handled, as it will be caught and fixed before the program leaves development. At worst, a compiler-detectable error results in los...

   C++,Compiler,Error detection     2012-04-08 09:55:20

  Faster than C

Judging the performance of programming languages, usually C is called the leader, though Fortran is often faster. New programming languages commonly use C as their reference and they are really proud to be only so much slower than C. Few language designer try to beat C. What does it take for a language to be faster than C? Better Aliasing Information Aliasing describes the fact that two references might point to the same memory location. For example, consider the canonical memory copy: void...

   C,Performance,Speed,Fortran,Criteria     2012-03-25 09:12:23

  How Integers Should Work (In Systems Programming Languages)

My last post outlined some of the possibilities for integer semantics in programming languages, and asked which option was correct. This post contains my answers. Just to be clear: I want practical solutions, but I’m not very interested by historical issues or backwards compatibility with any existing language, and particularly not with C and C++. We’ll start with: Premise 1: Operations on default integer types return the mathematically correct result or else trap. This is th...

   Number,Algorithm,System,Embedded system     2011-12-05 12:48:41

  How Query Optimizer Works in RDBMS

In a previous post, we discussed how the various relational operators are implemented in relational database systems. If you have read that post, you probably still remember that there are a few alternative implementations for every operator. Thus, how should RDBMS determine which algorithm (or implementation) to use? Obviously, to optimize the performance for any query, RDBMS has to select the correct the algorithm based on the query. It would not be desirable to always use the same algori...

   DATABASE,DATABASE DESIGN,DATABASE OPTIMIZATION     2019-04-20 07:26:32

  Some tricks and tips for using for range in GoLang

GoLang provides two major ways to loop through elements of array, slice and map. They are for and for range. Many people find that for range is very convenient when don't care about the index of the element. In this post, some tricks and tips would be talked about regarding for range. 1. Loop and get pointer of each element Assume there is a code snippet like below which is to get the pointer of each element in an array and create a new array with the corresponding pointer. arr := [2]int{1, 2} r...

   POINTER,FOR LOOP,GOLANG,FOR RANGE     2020-03-08 01:07:00

  A return to good code

Stop doing this:public boolean foo() { if (true) {   return true;   }  else {   return false;   }}It always amazes me when I dig into an open source project, and I see code written by supposed experts, and reviewed by seasoned professionals, and nobody slaps the wrists of the developer who shoves return statements right in the middle of a method.Tell me, how hard is it to do this:public boolean foo() {   boolean flag = true;  ...

   Java,Code,Method,Return,Condition     2011-03-23 01:24:47

  Node.js: Five Things Every PHP Developer Should Know

I recently started working on a few Node.js applications. Coming most recently from PHP (and Drupal in particular), I found the transition to Node.js to be surprisingly easy. Pleasurable, in fact. But I had to learn to think differently about a few things. Below I list the five things I think every PHP developer should know about Node.js. 1. Node.js Is Built On Chrome's JavaScript Engine Google's browser, Chrome, has a notoriously fast JavaScript engine called V8. And this JavaScript engine ...

   PHP,Node.js,Developer,Feature     2012-02-09 07:37:48

  Silicon Valley engineers have something to say about work from home

Quitting from Google and joined Yahoo which was thought as a declining giant, Marissa Mayer has been trying to prove that she has the ability to lead this Internet giant to reverse the decline. In order to boost the low morale of the employees, Meyer tried to transplant Google's work culture to Yahoo with office decoration, free lunch and issuance of smart phones, these generous measures let her win the applause of the Silicon Valley.But a recent ban issued by Meyer has attracted a lot of contro...

   Work from home,Yahoo, Marissa Mayer     2013-03-07 02:39:23

  Engineer mindset in internet companies

This post tries to list down how we keep engineer mindset while doing development work. We engineers are the ones deliver the actual product by writing each and every line of the code, in order to deliver high quality and less buggy code, we should keep reminding ourselves what needs to be paid attention to during our daily development work.  So what is engineer mindset? Engineer mindset is that we should keep in mind that each and every line of code we write should serve the purpose well a...

   ENGINEER MINDSET,INTERNET COMPANY     2021-10-07 04:09:08

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