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

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Shortcuts

  Tips for Putting a Price on Your Work

WHEN I first started as a freelance writer, I was eager to sell myself — but not eager to have to discuss money. So I more or less took whatever was offered. Then I read somewhere that no matter what price a new client states, you always say in a polite but firm tone, “I expected more.” The first time I tried it, I was sweating and I doubt my tone was firm — it probably sounded more like pleading — but to my great surprise, it worked. With th...

   Development,Price,Worl,Negotiation     2012-01-29 04:37:17

  Pair Programming Stereotypes

Over the last couple of years, I’ve done a lot of pair programming. Pair programming inside my team, at customer sites, in coding dojos and in my open source projects. Pair programming is really a great and effective experience when performed by an pair of developers knowing how to pair program. Unfortunately, you cannot just put two developers in front of a single computer and expect them to perform perfectly from the start. Pair programming has to be learned. Both developers need to...

   Code programming,Pair gramming,Sterotype     2012-02-29 05:09:14

  Why I Still Use Emacs

At school, I’m known as the Emacs guy; when people have questions about configuring Emacs or making it work a certain way, they often come and ask me. Sometimes, some people ask me why use Emacs at all? Isn’t it a really old editor and aren’t Eclipse or Visual Studio much better? I mean, they don’t have weird key bindings and have intellisense, that’s surely better for a programmer, right? I will attempt in this post to explain some of the reasons why I still c...

   Linux,Emacs,Editor,Advantage,IDE     2012-02-20 05:30:41

  Programming language choices for an IT manager

A TechRepublic reader named Aaron emailed me and posed excellent questions; here’s an excerpt from his email:“I manage a small IT department and all my skills are self-taught. At times I struggle with complex business initiatives and I believe if I had some programming skills I would be more adept at handling the initiatives. Can you recommend a programming language? Is formal education the best path or have you found that programming can be self-taught?”I’m sure a lot ...

   IT Manager,Programming,Skills,Programming knowledge     2011-10-21 08:37:10

  Google Chrome Alternatives: Best Browsers For Android

Most Android phones come with Chrome pre-installed as the default browser. There’s nothing wrong with that. Chrome is a great browser with excellent features. And it feels natural alongside all the other Google products that also come pre-installed on Android. But the type of browser someone uses is super important. In the end, the browser may be one of the most-used apps on any phone.  Browsers need to fit the needs and lifestyle of the person who is using it. To name a few examples,...

   FIREFOX,MICROSFT EDGE,CHROME     2020-06-18 07:12:35

  Top 7 programmers bad habits

1.- The all code is crap, except mine, attitude. I have bad news for you buddy, all code is crap. No matter how much effort you put on it, there is always a majority of programmers who are going to think that your code sucks and that they could have done it 10 times better. I have already covered this topic in previous posts, you can find more information of what exactly I mean when I say that all the code is crap here and here. How to fix it: Don’t criticise others people code, it ...

   programming,habit,tips     2011-06-07 00:36:22

  Microsoft Edge: Banishing Painful Memories of Internet Explorer

If you are one of those unlucky early internet users, you would remember how painful those days were; like our basic computer, the browser used to take forever to load, but nothing could diminish our excitement for the latest innovation i.e. the internet. Around that time Internet Explorer was the best we had. In fact, it enjoyed more than 90% of the market share in 2003 when Microsoft bundled its browser with the Windows operating system for free. However, things began to go downhill for the I...

   MICROSOFT,WINDOWS     2019-11-18 06:40:25

  Designing Great API Docs

Writing documentation is one of those things that is dreaded by many developers. It takes a lot of effort and time to get right. And too often, people take shortcuts. This is sad, because well designed documentation is the key to getting people excited about your project, whether it's open source or a developer focused product. In fact, I argue that the most important piece of UX for a developer product isn't the homepage or the sign up process or the SDK download. It's the API documentati...

   API docs,Design API docs,Advice     2012-03-09 23:15:00

  Top Ten Tips for Correct C++ Coding

Brian Overland, long-time Microsoft veteran and author of C++ Without Fear: A Beginner's Guide That Makes You Feel Smart, 2nd Edition, shares 10 of his most hard-earned, time-saving insights from decades of writing and debugging C++ code.My first introduction to the C family of languages was decades ago (yes, I know this dates me horribly). Later I learned C++. I wish someone back then had steered me around the most obvious potholes; it might have saved me hundreds of frustrating hours.I ca...

   C++,Tips,Top,Ten,Magic number,Integer di     2011-09-03 10:58:35

  Vim: revisited

I’ve had an off/on relationship with Vim for the past many years. Before, I never felt like we understood each other properly. Vim is almost useless without plugins and some essential settings in .vimrc, but fiddling with all the knobs and installing all the plugins that I thought I needed was a process that in the end stretched out from few hours to weeks, months even; and it the end it just caused frustration instead of making me a happier coder. Recently, I decided to give Vim ano...

   Linux,Editor,Vim,Setup,Quick guideline     2011-12-12 07:55:27

RECENT