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  On Programming Deadlines

There are a lot of differences between programming, and programming professionally. The most notorious of which, is deadlines.DeadlinesWhen you're writing code for yourself, you can spend as much (or as little time) on it as you please--but when you're writing code for other people, you've got only a limited amount of time and resources to get the job done. In my experience, this typically leads to one of two situations:You've got to extend the deadline to finish the job properly.You've got to w...

   Programming,Deadline,Transparent,Test,TODO     2011-11-01 07:10:21

  In-memory key-value store in C, Go and Python

Subtitle: Wow Go’s net library is fast On paternity leave for my second child, I found myself writing an in-memory hashmap (a poor-man’s memcached), in Go, Python and C. I was wondering how hard it would be to replace memcached, if we wanted to do something unusual with our key-value store. I also wanted to compare the languages, and, well, I get bored easily! The code is on github as Key-Value-Polyglot. Each version implements enough of the get and set commands from the mem...

   key-value,Memory,C,Python,Go     2012-03-21 09:21:51

  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

  Translating math into code with examples in Java, Racket, Haskell and Python

Discrete mathematical structures form the foundation of computer science.These structures are so universal that most research papers in the theory of computation, programming languages and formal methods present concepts in terms of discrete mathematics rather than code.The underlying assumption is that the reader will know how to translate these structures into a faithful implementation as a working program.A lack of material explaining this translation frustrates outsiders.What deepens that fr...

   Math,Algorithms,Formula,Program,Python     2011-11-14 08:43:15

  On Erlang's Syntax

I first planned to release this text as an appendix entry for Learn You Some Erlang, but considering this feels more like editorial content and not exactly something for a reference text, I decided it would fit better as a blog post. Many newcomers to Erlang manage to understand the syntax and program around it without ever getting used to it. I've read and heard many complaints regarding the syntax and the 'ant turd tokens' (a subjectively funny way to refer to ,, ; and .), how annoying...

   Erlang,Syntax,Error     2011-12-22 08:35:42

  How big is sizeof structure?

First let's see the codes of a structure: struct node{ int a; int b; }; Question : What's sizeof(node)? The answer is very simple, on a 32 bit machine, an int will take 4 bytes and two ints will take 8 bytes. So sizeof(node) is 8. The answer for the above codes is 8, then how about the following structure: struct node{ char a; int b; }; Question : Then what's sizeof(node) now? int takes 4 bytes, char takes 1 bytes, is the answer 5? Now the answer may not be 5, on some mac...

   Data structure alignment, pack     2012-10-29 12:13:37

  A Solution to CPU-intensive Tasks in IO Loops

Back in October 2011, Ted Dziuba infamously said that Node.js is Cancer.  A provocative title to a provocative article.  The only thing it didn’t really provoke in the commentary was much thought ;)  Zing. My interpretation of the article is that Ted holds up the classic blocking-IO process-per-request (or  thread per request; same difference) model as superior.  Yet we all remember where the blocking-IO forking model got Apache in the early days.  ...

   CPU,Intensive IO loops,Solution,C++     2012-02-06 07:42:40

  How to Think Creatively

I grew up hungry to do something creative, to set myself apart. I also believed creativity was magical and genetically encoded. As early as the age of 8, I began sampling the arts, one after another, to see if I'd inherited some gift.Eventually, I became a journalist. For many years, I told other people's stories. I was successful, but I rarely felt truly creative.The first hint I might have sold myself short came in the mid-1990s. In the course of writing a book called What Really Matters, Sear...

   Creative thinking,Saturation,Incubation,Illumination,Verification     2011-11-14 08:39:11

  India: The World's Secret Silicon Valley

You might not know it, but a key cog in the global innovation machine is hiding in plain sight in the world's largest democracyReutersFor many firms, developing new products for consumers around the world is the most visible manifestation of innovation - the "real deal." But many people still see India as a place where other people's ideas are made or executed and not where innovation begins. (After all, you don't hear about an Indian equivalent to Google, iPod or Viagra.) Bu they're wrong. In m...

   Innovation,India,Silicon Valley,GE,Chip,Intel     2011-11-16 08:06:54

  How To Build A Site That Looks Great On Every Screen

The responsive design revolution is upon us. With tablet and smartphone use soaring and changing our media habits, Web publishers no longer have a choice but to build designs that work properly on any device or screen size.The hard-working Silicon Valley design firm ZURB has recently released version 2.0 of its responsive design boilerplate kit called Foundation, which is a fundamental framework for a one-size-fits all Web project.Foundation is a CSS and Javascript framework that comes with...

   Website,Design,Device,Screen,Adaptable,Mobile     2011-10-31 10:46:32

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