Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Lesson

  What will happen after Baidu acquires PPS?

One month ago there was some news that Ai Qiyi would acquire PPS through Baidu Now this has been confirmed, Baidu will spend $400,000,000 on acquiring Shanghai Public Source Network Co., Ltd. (PPS). After completion of the acquisition, Ai Qiyi will likely change the overall content and production line of PPS so that they can complement each other's shortages. Many people are optimistic about this merger, Ai Qiyi can complement its shortage on PC side and PPS can also get more copyrighted film an...

   Ai Qiyi,Sohu,Youku,PPS,acquisition     2013-04-26 22:53:12

  Do You Make These 5 Database Design Mistakes?

Look, everyone makes mistakes. It’s true. But not all of us have the chance to make mistakes that end up costing millions of dollars in hardware and production support costs. Any one of the following five mistakes listed below will add additional costs to your company. It’s guaranteed. The costs could be hardware related (extra disk space, network bandwidth), which tend to add up quickly. The costs are also support related (bad performance, database re-design, report cre...

   Database design,Mistake,Advice,Data type,Compatibility     2012-01-03 11:25:13

  In praise of impractical programming

Although it’s become a cultural mainstay now, I still remember when I first saw that thick book — the one with the wizard on the cover — about a school for magic where wonders are easily conjured by those who know the proper spells. Of course, I’m talking about the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. There was that other book with the spells, but the “Wizard Book” sincerely claimed to teach magic. For the past few years, I’ve been ...

   Impractical Programming,Structure,Scheme,Practical     2011-12-05 12:28:58

  A Few Lessons I Learned After Having Failed

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.- Michael JordanIt was mid 2008 and Younique was doing reasonably well. However, I had an itch that I needed to scratch. I wanted to build a mobile advertising platform – think DoubleClickmeets AdMob. At the time the mobile adverti...

   Lesson,Career,Success,Failure,Mobile advertising     2011-10-17 11:21:55

  Macro vs. Micro Optimisation

So there's recently been a bit of hype about another Colebourne article: http://blog.joda.org/2011/11/real-life-scala-feedback-from-yammer.html I'd like to respond to a few points he makes. First - You should evaluate Scala and pay attention to its benefits and flaws before adopting it.  Yes, there are flaws to Scala.   Working at typesafe makes you more aware of some of them.  We're actively working to reduce/minimize/get rid of these.   In my opinion, the negat...

   Optimization,Performance,Micro,Macro,Software     2011-11-30 12:04:25

  In College, Working Hard to Learn High School Material

In June, Desiree Smith was graduated from Murry Bergtraum High. Her grades were in the 90s, she said, and she had passed the four state Regents exams. Since enrolling last month at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, Ms. Smith, 19, has come to realize that graduating from a New York City public high school is not the same as learning. She failed all three placement tests for LaGuardia and is now taking remediation in reading, writing and math. So are Nikita Thomas, ofBedford Stuyves...

   Education,College,High school,Material,Knowledge transfer     2011-10-24 11:51:39

  Don't write on the whiteboard

I recently interviewed at a major technology company. I won't mention the name because, honestly, I can't remember whether I signed an NDA, much less how strong it was.I did well. Mostly because of luck. I normally step over myself when I interview. I guess I've improved over the years. Here are a few tips to ace your own interview.1. Don't write on the whiteboardWhen I interviewed at Palantir around 5 years ago, I had a lot of trouble with this. Yes, I knew next to nothing about compu...

   Interview,Preparation,Whiteboard,Note,Python     2012-01-11 11:31:32

  Performance is a Feature

We've always put a heavy emphasis on performance at Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Not just because we're performance wonks (guilty!), but because we think speed is a competitive advantage. There's plenty of experimental data proving that the slower your website loads and displays, the less people will use it. [Google found that] the page with 10 results took 0.4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took 0.9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a seco...

   Website,Perfomance,Optimization     2011-07-02 01:52:12

  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

  Why developer-friendliness is central to API design

Today, APIs play a bigger role in software development than ever before. The evolution of computing has been dominated by ever-increasing levels of abstraction; the use of higher-level languages, of course, but also the development of platforms, libraries, and frameworks. Professor Douglass C. Smith claims the progression of this second category far outpaced the development of programming languages.  Developers are also noticing that difficulty has shifted from designing algorithms a...

   API,User friendly,Significance, Improve quality     2011-12-21 02:29:54

RECENT