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  Why developer-friendliness is central to API design

Today, APIs play a bigger role in software development than ever before. The evolution of computing has been dominated by ever-increasing levels of abstraction; the use of higher-level languages, of course, but also the development of platforms, libraries, and frameworks. Professor Douglass C. Smith claims the progression of this second category far outpaced the development of programming languages.  Developers are also noticing that difficulty has shifted from designing algorithms a...

   API,User friendly,Significance, Improve quality     2011-12-21 02:29:54

  Asynchronous UIs - the future of web user interfaces

It's an interesting time to be working on the frontend now. We have new technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, Canvas and WebGL; all of which greatly increase the possibilities for web application development. The world is our oyster!However, there's also another trend I've noticed. Web developers are still stuck in the request/response mindset. I call it the 'click and wait' approach - where every UI interaction results in a delay before another interaction can be performed. That's the process they'...

   AJAX,Asynchronous UI,AUI,User interface     2011-11-18 08:55:08

  Optimization Tricks used by the Lockless Memory Allocator

With the releasing of the Lockless Memory Allocator under the GPL version 3.0 license, we can now discuss more of the optimization tricks used inside it. Many of these are things you wouldn't want to use in normal code. However, when speed is the ultimate goal, sometimes we need to break a few rules and use code that is a little sneaky.The SlabA slab is a well-known technique for allocating fixed size objects. For a given object size, a chunk of memory is divided up into smaller regions of that ...

   Optimization,Memory allocation     2011-11-16 08:02:16

  C Macro Tips and Tricks

Preprocessor vs Compiler To properly understand C macros, you must understand how a C program is compiled. In particular, you must understand the different things that happen in the preprocessor and in the compiler. The preprocessor runs first, as the name implies. It performs some simple textual manipulations, such as: Stripping comments. Resolving #include directives and replacing them with the contents of the included file. Evaluating #if and #ifdef directives. Evaluating #defin...

   C,Macro,Preprocessor,Trick     2012-05-01 06:49:05

  Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity.  It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain and suffering.  This post aspires to be README.txt for your career as a young engineer.  The goal is to make you happy, by filling in the gaps in your education regarding how the “real world” actually works.  ...

   Career,Programmer,Advice,Low level,Development     2011-10-29 07:09:23

  A Fun Approach To Creating More Successful Websites

As Web designers and developers, each project we work with has a unique set of goals and requirements. But one goal we have for all of our projects is that we want them to make an impression on people — we want the websites that we create to be memorable. A fun experience is often an enjoyable one and an enjoyable experience is usually a memorable one. Therefore, it stands to reason that one of the ways to create a memorable experience is to make it a fun experience. In this article,...

   Web design,Elements,UI,Success     2012-03-05 05:10:07

  Decision Trees in C#

Decision trees are simple predictive models which map input attributes to a target value using simple conditional rules. Trees are commonly used in problems whose solutions must be readily understandable or explainable by humans, such as in computer-aided diagnostics and credit analysis. Download source code Download sample applications Download the full Accord.NET Framework Introduction Decision Trees give a direct and intuitive way for obtaining the classification of a new instance f...

   C#,Decision tree     2012-03-23 10:00:56

  40+ Techniques to enhance your php code

1. Do not use relative paths , instead define a ROOT path Its quite common to see such lines : 1require_once('../../lib/some_class.php'); This approach has many drawbacks : It first searches for directories specified in the include paths of php , then looks from the current directory. So many directories are checked. When a script is included by another script in a different directory , its base directory changes to that of the including script. Another issue , is that when a script is being ru...

   PHP,Quirk,Trick,Efficiency,Techniques     2012-04-10 13:06:55

  The Essence of Google Dart: Building Applications, Snapshots, Isolates

WÑ–th thousands of programming languages floating around, why is Google introducing Google Dart? What can it possibly add? The short answer: the Google Dart team wanted a language well suited to modern application development, both on the server and the (mobile) client. Some of Dart's features address problems that languages like Java or Javascript have long had. Dart's Snapshots resemble Smalltalk images, allowing (nearly) instant application startup and wi...

   Dart,Google,Client side,Web,Language,Snapshort,Isolate     2011-10-24 11:41:16

  Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code

Twice a month, we revisit some of our readers’ favorite posts from throughout the history of Nettuts+.Code readability is a universal subject in the world of computer programming. It’s one of the first things we learn as developers. This article will detail the fifteen most important best practices when writing readable code.1 - Commenting & DocumentationIDE’s (Integrated Development Environment) have come a long way in the past few years. This made commenting your ...

   Readable,Source Code,Refactor,Comment.OO     2011-04-11 02:20:08

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