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  Rebirth of Microsoft?

Only from the point of view of design and products, Microsoft may seem like an ongoing decline of the old giant: IE browser market share continues to drop, PC market continues to shrink where Windows depends on and tablet PC market gets rapid expansion, Windows Mobile, Windows phone perform not so well, even CEO Steve Ballmer is often ridiculed and accused. All these seem to indicate that Microsoft's golden era is over. But on the other hand, while its net profit for the past two years has ...

   Microsoft,Rebirth,change     2012-10-05 20:09:15

  Don't write on the whiteboard

I recently interviewed at a major technology company. I won't mention the name because, honestly, I can't remember whether I signed an NDA, much less how strong it was.I did well. Mostly because of luck. I normally step over myself when I interview. I guess I've improved over the years. Here are a few tips to ace your own interview.1. Don't write on the whiteboardWhen I interviewed at Palantir around 5 years ago, I had a lot of trouble with this. Yes, I knew next to nothing about compu...

   Interview,Preparation,Whiteboard,Note,Python     2012-01-11 11:31:32

  Why Apple Mac switches its CPU? The war between Intel and ARM

About three months ago, the new iPad Pro was released and it supports touch pad and mouse. It conveys a clear message to users that they want people to treat iPad Pro as a laptop.  As we know, iPad and iPhone are both using iOS, if iOS can run on laptop,  it means MacOS and iOS can merge and become a unified OS. And if Mac and iPhone can share the same OS, it means the same app can run in all places. It is becoming clearer and clearer that Apple is planning to do this exact thing. Late...

   APPLE,INTEL,ARM,WWDC,A14     2020-06-20 00:19:02

  The Giant Mafia

There is an old Chinese saying "Things of a kind come together. People of a mind fall into the same group.". In the wave of Web 2.0, there are many emerging IT giants coming out the world. And many of them are founded by a group of people who previously worked together at the same company such as PayPal and Facebook. This is called giant mafia. Let's see what people from the big IT giant have done after leaving the original company. The PayPal mafia Peter Thiel, co-founder and CEO of PayPal bef...

   Facebook mafia,PayPal mafia,Twitter mafia     2015-04-04 10:32:00

  The Death of .NET and the Power of Perception

One of my long-standing issues with Microsoft is its inability to control the perceptions surrounding its own products. One of the biggest examples was during the Windows Vista years when, even after the product had been fully patched and worked fine, Apple continued to do a better job to define the image of Windows (compilation of ads here) than Microsoft did, costing Microsoft billions in lost revenue for the millions it saved on a strong advertising campaign. The firm has a history of being p...

   .NET,future,death,bottleneck,development     2011-08-10 03:13:40

  How to tell if this idea is a good idea.

Good Idea or Bad Idea?I’ve got an idea for a product. I’ve talked to some people. I know some people in the industry. I have been cold calling others. The idea is promising. The price point people have agreed with is about where I would like it to be. I’ve shown some mockups around and iterated on them. Now, I feel the need to start writing code because, well, I like writing code. And I’m comfortable writing code.But I see lean people.Steve Blank, Eric ...

   Idea,Good,Bad,Distinguish,Feature,Coding     2011-11-24 09:19:01

  Why Dynamic Programming Languages Are Slow

In a statically typed language, the compiler knows the data-type of a variable and how to represent that. In a dynamically-typed language, it has to keep flag describing the actual type of the value of the variable, and the program has to perform a data-dependent branch on that value each time it manipulates a variable.  It also has to look up all methods and operators on it. The knock-on effect of this on branching and data locality is lethal to general purpose runtime performance. T...

   Dynamic language,Slow,Analysis     2012-03-26 15:33:11

  Why I Quit My Job to Start a Tech Company

Back in November of 2006, before NY Mag and TimeOut put startups on the cover, before the “tech bubble”, before Twitter and Foursquare were popular, before working at a startup in NY was considered a reasonable thing to do, I was a private equity investor for a $1.6 billion fund called Quadrangle Group. It was just my third year out of college and I made a little over $250,000. For a Brazilian immigrant who spent most of his childhood kind of worried he would have to do physica...

   Start,Company,Creative,Innovation,Techno     2011-08-16 08:38:35

  The Number One Trait of a Great Developer

Maybe the best programmers aren’t those who spectacularly solve crazy problems, but those who don’t create them, which is much more silent. – Lena HerrmannWhen I look around at other companies hiring Ruby on Rails developers, I see them focusing on three major traits: Super-smart; Large community following; Deep Ruby knowledge. They’re all wrong. While these are great aspects in moderation, they all miss the number one quality of a fantastic developer: Judge...

   Developer,Trait,Judgement,No. 1     2011-11-05 06:49:19

  Scala feels like EJB 2, and other thoughts

At Devoxx last week I used the phrase "Scala feels like EJB 2 to me". What was on my mind?ScalaFor a number of years on this blog I've been mentioning a desire to write a post about Scala. Writing such a post is not easy, because anyone who has been paying attention to anti-Scala blog posts will know that writing one is a sure fire way of getting flamed. The Scala community is not tolerant of dissent.But ultimately, I felt that it was important for me to speak out and express my opinions. As I s...

   Scala,Module,EJB,Concurrency,Feature     2011-11-22 08:29:44

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