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

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Practical

  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

  Surprising applications of math

The comments in the previous post touched on surprising applications of math, so I thought I’d expand this theme into it’s own post. Below I’ll give a couple general examples of surprising applications and then I’ll give a couple more personal applications I found surprising.Number theory has traditionally been the purest of pure mathematics. People study number theory for the joy of doing so, not to make money. At least that was largely true until the ...

   Math,Number theory,Algorithms,Differential euqation     2011-11-18 09:24:19

  Do scientists really need a PhD?

Young scientists at a Chinese genomics institute are foregoing conventional postgraduate training for the chance to be part of major scientific initiatives. Is this the way of the future?The approach to extended postgraduate training varies from country to country. The United States and Europe, for example, have long believed that students need to finish a multiyear programme of postgraduate work before they can fully participate in the front rank of research, whether in industry or acad...

   Career,PhD,Scientist,Relationship,BGI     2012-01-02 08:19:32

  HP's Apotheker recounts TouchPad disaster in post mortem

Summary: “The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations,” says HP’s CEO. The TouchPad was quickly becoming a money pit. HP CEO Leo Apotheker wasn’t shy about outlining the company’s challenges. He noted that the “tablet effect is real” and dinged HP’s PC business. In addition, the TouchPad failure was about to become a money pit. That reality led HP to move...

   HP,webOs,Death,Palm,Touchpad,Diaster     2011-08-19 07:35:17

  How To Write A Good Programming Test

I’ve taken and marked a lot of programming tests in the past. I love doing them as it’s always good to see what challenges different programmers have come up with when designing them. Unfortunately, however, most of them aren’t very good. Below is a list of general ideas to help increase the quality of programmer tests. 1. Keep it relevant Too many of the tests have questions on content that simply isn’t relevant to the job. The whole idea behind a programming test i...

   Programming test,Interview,Questions,Pro     2011-08-26 02:46:44

  Tribute to Java On Successful Completion Of 20 Years

There is a great news for fans of Java that this week Java have completed its 20 years of success and that’s why it is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Java is a language which show legacy with the piece of technology and this is virtually important as the powerful programming methods and related machines are JVM (java virtual machine). SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH OF NEW VERSIONS Java developers are specially celebrating their event due to the huge success of their language and they get success a...

   Java software development, Java development services     2015-05-29 08:23:52

  Letter to a Young Developer

I’ve been getting some emails from young developers wanting to “level up” as programmers. I’m definitely not the first to write about this topic, so I’m not sure how much I have to add. Still, for what it’s worth here are a few points off the top of my head: Work with other developers. We are at a wonderful time in the history of technology when for the first time, it doesn’t really matter where you are or who you are working for. So long as you ...

   Letter,Tips,Programmer,Developer,Opportu     2011-09-14 11:49:24

  C++ Without Fear: Functions

A function is a group of related statements that accomplish a specific task. Understanding functions is a crucial step to programming in C++, as Brian Overland explains in this chapter from his book.The most fundamental building block in the programming toolkit is the function—often known as procedure or subroutinein other languages. A function is a group of related statements that accomplish a specific task. Once you define a function, you can execute it whenever you need ...

   C++,Feature,Function,Elaboration,Fear     2011-09-03 11:03:11

  Test-Driven Development? Give me a break...

Update: At the bottom of this post, I've linked to two large and quite different discussions of this post, both of which are worth reading... Update 2: If the contents of this post make you angry, okay. It was written somewhat brashly. But, if the title alone makes you angry, and you decide this is an article about "Why Testing Code Sucks" without having read it, you've missed the point. Or I explained it badly :-)Some things programmers say can be massive red flags. When I h...

   Test driven,Application design,tool     2011-10-17 10:19:16

  What the Heck are Algebraic Data Types? ( for Programmers )

This post is meant to be a gentle introduction to Algebraic Data Types. Some of you may be asking why you should learn Algebraic Data Types and how will they change your world?  I am not going to answer that, but suffice it to say that Algebraic Data Types are the underpinning of the type systems to the ML derived languages, Haskell and OCaml included, and their construction and properties allow for the power (and inference) that accompanies these type systems.  They are cropping...

   Algebraic Data Type,Set,Operator,Programmer     2011-12-30 08:31:43

RECENT