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  The price of information

SOMETIMES it takes but a single pebble to start an avalanche. On January 21st Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote a blog post outlining the reasons for his longstanding boycott of research journals published by Elsevier. This firm, which is based in the Netherlands, owns more than 2,000 journals, including such top-ranking titles as Cell and the Lancet. However Dr Gowers, who won the Fields medal, mathematics’s equivalent of a Nobel prize, in 1998,...

   Information,Price,Value,Facebook,Social network     2012-02-07 06:24:53

  Which Type of IT Career is Best For You?

Considering the growth of the information technology job market, a career in IT is an incredibly smart career move.  A career in IT can mean many things – you can become a network administration, website developer, database specialist, programmer or engineer. The job range is vast and can suit various personalities and levels of technical skill. Having a good insight into those job profiles is key to make the right decision about your career path. Here's a selection of some of the mos...

   career,IT,tips     2014-07-30 09:21:40

  Why is Great Design so Hard?

I want to take a slight detour from usable privacy and security and discuss issues of design. I was recently at the Microsoft Faculty Summit, an annual event where Microsoft discusses some of the big issues and directions they are headed. In one of the talks, a designer at Microsoft mentioned two data points I've informally heard before but had never confirmed. First, the ratio of developers to user interface designers at Microsoft was 50:1. Second, this ratio was better than any other comp...

   Apple,Microsoft,UI design     2011-03-28 02:06:31

  "Programmer" is an Overgeneralization

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." - Donald Knuth Earlier today, I came across a post during a google-fu session that claimed that no one should use the C++ standard library function make_heap, because almost nobody uses it correctly. I immediately started mentally ranting about how utterly ridiculous this claim is, because anyone whose gone to a basic algorithm class would know how to properly use make_heap. Then I started thinking about all the ...

   Programmer,Overgeneration,Overload     2012-03-13 08:13:16

  I am a great programmer, but horrible algorithmist

I am a great programmer, but a horrible algorithmist. It is a thought that has been weighing on me heavily recently, and I'd like to gather other developers feelings on the subject as well. I started what can be called my professional development career back in 1999. I was still in middle school, but my father hired me at his software company. My official duty was to make updates to our websites, but I mostly ended up bugging the other developers to help me learn. From there I picked up ...

   Programmer,Algorithmist,Diffference     2012-02-12 04:55:28

  Want to be a software engineer? Go to university

This editorial was originally submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald in response to an editorial proclaiming that people wanting to become software engineers should not attend university and instead learn a current popular programming language.   Over the past few years I’ve developed software for large corporations, started the Vodafail campaign, co-founded Mijura and represented Australia in the global Robocup (humanoid robotic soccer) competition. I graduated from University...

   Software engineer,University,Systematic study,Research     2011-12-07 08:48:54

  Stanford Computer Science '10-'11 Salary Survey Results

CS/EE UndergradsData: I received 140 responses which described 360 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups.Salary offers ranged from $64,400 to $100,000. The average salary offer was $79,914. The median salary offer was $ 82,200.About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistan...

   Stanford,Computer science,Salary,Survey     2011-12-25 00:54:41

  What I learned interviewing with Google

Over the last few weeks I’ve been interviewing with Google for a job doing primarily JavaScript development. I didn’t end up getting the job but I thought I would share the process of interviewing for Google as it was both very exciting and a humbling experience. I can’t reveal everything as I’m under a few NDAs. I’m not going to mention the products or teams that I was interviewing for but you may be able to guess. For those that don’t know me, I...

   Google,Experience,Interview,Algorithm     2012-02-10 06:19:17

  30-Minute Exercise to Become a Better Programmer

I believe that motivation is really important. That’s why from time to time I read books about time management (as they motivate me to be focused and continue evolve my TM-system) and books about software craftsmanship. The other day I finished one of this kind of books - “Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman”. This book motivated me to think carefully what I want to invest my time in. Also, it coincided with my 25th birthday and, of co...

   Programmer,Exercise,Skill,Requirements     2012-01-28 07:21:13

  Lessons from the Trenches

I believe that making a game is part art and part science, so it's no wonder that managing a game project is also part art and part science. Clearly if it was all science then the industry would get a collective F for not having made any significant progress over the last decade - all one has to do is just glance at the published postmortems to see that the same patterns are repeated over and over.A game has to be fun, engaging, grab users in the first two minutes and also keep their a...

   Game,Trenches,Tips,Game design,pattern     2011-10-10 05:08:50

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