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  Not better, but different

The most important feature of Apple products is usability--Simple, aesthetic, easy to use.Their products may not necessarily the most powerful, but they usually are the easiest to use. Following picture show a Mac (left) and a PC(right), which one looks better?Many products are trying to mimic these features, but one problem comes out:It's hard to keep a product simple while providing so many new features.If you continuously add new features to your product,  your product will become more c...

   Market positioning,Product manager     2012-05-19 13:29:20

  Pay Your Programmers $200/hour

If you are hiring programmers, you should pay them $200/hr. This breaks through otherwise impenetrable psychological barriers, helps solve the agency problem, and ensures you are only hiring programmers when you really need them. Expectations $200/hr is an open declaration of your expectations. It states that you are expecting to hire both a professional and an expert in the field. As a programmer, I treat contracts that pay me $200/hr differently from jobs/contracts that pay me $65/hr eq...

   Salary,Programmer,Responsibility,Urgency,Value     2011-12-31 15:34:57

  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

  What to put on whiteboard during an interview

As a programmer, you may go through different kinds of programming tests while interviewing for jobs. The most famous and difficult one may be the whiteboard test for lots of people. Usually the interviewer will give the candidate an algorithm problem or case study and ask the candidate to implement the algorithm with his/her favorite programming language. The code to be written is not too much but it requires the candidate to thoroughly consider different edge cases. So wha...

   TIPS,INTERVIEW,WHITEBOARD TEST     2014-08-29 20:34:52

  What’s Your Start-up’s “Bus Count”? 7 Myths of Entrepreneurship and Programming

Software development is a rapidly evolving field that got off to a very rocky start. Conventional wisdom for many years was that software engineering should be like other types of engineering: design carefully, specify precisely, and then just build it – exactly to spec. Just like building a bridge, right? The problem with this approach is that software is just that. Soft. It’s endlessly malleable. You can change software pretty much any time you want, and people do. A...

   Start-up,technical,company,tips     2011-07-04 07:44:54

  What, exactly, is a Product Manager?

I often get asked what a product manager is. What do they do? Where do they come from? Why do they like sharpies so much?In his book Inspired, Marty Cagan describes the job of the product manager as “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible”. Similarly, I’ve always defined product management as the intersection between business, technology and user experience (hint – only a product manager would define themselves in a venn diagram). A good produc...

   Product manager,Definition,Features,Career     2011-10-12 11:42:15

  Kicking ass together: How to improve coding skills as a group

Over the last year and a half, I have worked with a small group of students and staff to create an excellent online learning community at Mendicant University. Unfortunately, because Mendicant is something that we’re intentionally scaling at a very slow pace, we won’t directly reach as many people as we’d like to any time soon. In this post, I’ve collected some of the things that I think contribute to making Mendicant University a great place to learn. I’d love...

   Code skill,Group,Improvement,Efficiency     2012-01-31 23:59:33

  Why using anchors as buttons sucks

So let's say you're an awesome web developer making an awesome web app. One day, you add a link in the web app that has an event handler instead of an href. Testing it, you realize that your cursor doesn't change when hovering over it, unlike a normal link. You think for a minute and then give it a cursor:pointer style, which fixes the issue. You are happy.The next day, QA informs you that the link cannot be tabbed to. Confused, you do some research and find a solution to the problem: Sim...

   Anchor,Button,Link,Sucks     2012-02-05 07:22:39

  How I Learned to Program

Programming is, without a doubt, the most mentally rewarding thing I've ever done. Programming taught me that life should be fun, filled with creativity, and lived to the fullest. Programming taught me that anything is possible; I can do anything I want using only my mind. Programming also taught me that learning is fun. It showed me that the more you know, the more power you have. Programming showed me that a life filled with learning is a life worth living. Programming revealed to me wh...

   Programming,Tips,Write,Practice,Interest     2012-02-04 21:37:12

  What and what not to log while debugging

Log is a critical part of an application. It serves as an eye to the programmer on how the application is working while debugging. Especially for applications running on production environment, if the application encounters problem and the problem cannot be reproduced on other environments, log will be extremely useful. While log is essential, but developers have to log smartly. Because if don't put log smartly, you may not get what you want while debugging or you may get too many...

   PROGRAMMING,DEBUG,LOG,SUPPORT     2016-03-14 08:09:03

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