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  Software philosophy: Release early, release often vs polished releases

Release early, release often is a philosophy where you release the product as soon as possible and rapidly iterate it to perfection by listening to your customers. A polished release, on the other hand is where your product, in its initial version is solid, lacks obvious bugs and has just enough features to satisfy a majority of your consumers. Most software companies adopt either one of this and that choice is not superficial. In fact, it roots down to the heart of the company’s i...

   Design philosophy,Release early,Release often,Polished relaese     2011-11-28 09:22:17

  What Makes A Great Programmer?

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year 2000, Dr. Pargas was standing at the front of our data structures class talking about some data structure-y topic while an SSH session was projected on the wall in front of us. Someone asked a question, and he said something along the lines of "Well, if you want to be a real computer scientist you need to start using vi". I think he was smiling as he said it, and in hindsight his statement wasn't even slightly true, but being young and ...

   Tips.Programmer,Great,Great programmer     2011-06-08 03:08:04

  What Makes A Great Programmer?

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year 2000, Dr. Pargas was standing at the front of our data structures class talking about some data structure-y topic while an SSH session was projected on the wall in front of us. Someone asked a question, and he said something along the lines of "Well, if you want to be a real computer scientist you need to start using vi". I think he was smiling as he said it, and in hindsight his statement wasn't even slightly true, but being young and ...

   Programmer,Great programmer,Character     2012-02-15 06:14:04

  Whatever works for you

In my earlier 20s when I knew everything, I was a much bigger evangelist for my technology choices. I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot. But I used to be much more annoying with pushing my choices onto others. I’ve naturally reduced such evangelism as I approach 30 and realize I don’t know anything, but I’m now making a much more conscious effort to s...

   Choice,Product,Usability,Fittability     2011-11-29 08:39:09

  How deep should unit test go?

There is a question on Stackoverflow which says "How deep are your unit tests?". It is asked by a guy named John Nolan. The question is not too new, but what catches me is the Best Answer given by Kent Beck, who is the creator of Extreme programming(XP) and Test Driven Development(TDD). Let's look at the question first. The thing I've found about TDD is that its takes time to get your tests set up and being naturally lazy I always want to write as little code as possible. The first thing I seem ...

   Unit test,TDD,XP     2012-09-03 10:11:27

  "Simplicity" is not a simple concept

I've come to avoid using the word "Simplicity" or its variants ("Simple," &c.) It means too many different things to different people.For example, my original land-line phone was simple:It's simple by eliminating extraneous use cases. It only handles one user scenario, the one that was the most common when it was invented. If we think of the number of affordances and the number of uses, this kind of simplicity lowers the number of affordances by lowering the number of uses. I call this kind ...

   Simplicity,Software,Usability,iPhone,Phone     2011-11-24 09:21:09

  Products born for Cloud

Cloud computing has become increasingly popularity among companies. It greatly saves the investment of infrastructure and training with everything is running on cloud, it also improves the accessibility and flexibility of service provided by companies. With its popularity, many products are born or becoming popular to help build and move the apps to the cloud. Some well known names of these products are Vagrant, Docker/LXC, Chef and OpenStack. These tools can help create, test and deploy applica...

   Cloud,Openstack,Docker,Vargrant,LXC,Chef     2015-01-25 02:27:11

  Some lovely software design quotes

  Every time when I read technical books, I like reading the quote of a famous person at the start of a chapter(if any), usually they are very interesting. Here is a collection of famous quotes. Life’s too short to build something nobody wants – Ash Maurya, Running Lean author Give someone a program, you frustrate them for a day; teach them how to program, you frustrate them for a lifetime. – David Leinweber There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is...

   Quote,Software design     2012-10-13 09:13:34

  How I Develop Things and Why

I've always considered myself a bit of a software junkie. Nothing excites me more than a great piece of new software. Some of my best childhood memories are our trips to Grandma's house, where I'd have access to a computer with a dial-up connection that I'd use to obtain freeware and shareware. I'd bring 4 or 5 floppies with me and try to cram all the games, waveform editors, and utilities that I could sneaker-net home. Luckily today, excellent software written with passion oozes out of ...

   Development,Software,Why,How,Experience     2012-01-28 07:01:34

  Small team? Fix your life with a non-virtual assistant

Like many others, I tried “outsourcing my life” using a digital assistant. A year and a thousand bucks later, I’ve received one department store recommendation and an admittedly adequate spreadsheet of competitive research.I have since cancelled. Why didn’t it work for me?I think I just didn’t trust it/them/him/her (that I even have this ambiguity is indicative of the issues).Most of my mindless time-sinks involve at least a credit card number and are often a con...

   Work,Assistant,Team,Small,Individual,Get an assistant     2011-10-28 10:26:36

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