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  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

  The Wasteful Legacy of Programming as Language

A few years ago I visited a friend who is a graduate student in linguistics. After some time he asked me if I was aware of the work by Chomsky on formal languages. I told him that yes, Chomsky work was a basis for much of the developments in theoretical computer science. More than that, I was glad to learn that there was something technical that I could share and discuss with other people in linguistics. At the time I found this was just a great coincidence. It was only recently, though, t...

   Programming language,Human language,Chomsky     2011-11-28 10:36:34

  C Preprocessor Hell

Lisp programmers should stop reading right now because they'll likely suffer severe injury of the jaw muscles as they laugh themselves silly at how hard it is to do some things in C. The C language has a pre-processor (typically called cpp) that is both infuriating and powerful. How powerful is usually best described as 'just too little' and it has happened more than once that I found myself almost - but not quite - able to do what I wanted to do. The frustration can run very deep at ti...

   C,Preprocessor,Lisp,Hell     2012-01-19 10:22:31

  How to Seem (and Be) Deep

I recently attended a discussion group whose topic, at that session, was Death.  It brought out deep emotions.  I think that of all the Silicon Valley lunches I've ever attended, this one was the most honest; people talked about the death of family, the death of friends, what they thought about their own deaths.  People really listened to each other.  I wish I knew how to reproduce those conditions reliably.I was the only transhumanist present, and I was extremely careful not...

   Deep,Work,Smart,Work style,Study     2011-10-23 11:46:11

  How To Find a Great Start-Up Idea

Most people believe that the first step to starting a new company is to have a great idea. Back in business school, there were countless “idea brainstorming” sessions where groups of students would try to come up with the next billion dollar idea. None of them ever turned into anything.Great businesses are not built on ideas for marginal improvements or incremental features, they solve real problems and require a deep understanding of what those problems are. So the absolute worst th...

   Startup idea,Implement,Quickness     2012-03-18 00:26:22

  Easy Ways To Make Sure Your Website Is Ready For Mobile First Users

Websites are no longer a novelty or a useful complement to a brick and mortar store. They are an essential part of everyday life. The average American is spending up to ten hours every day online.   Businesses exist solely online, entrepreneurs with great ideas can start up online with very little help and even the most casual of users know what looks good. Consumers aren’t likely to forgive mistakes. If your website isn’t completely user-friendly, they know they ...

   SEO,MOBILE SEO,MOBILE DEVELOPMENT,MOBILE USABILITY     2018-09-17 03:57:15

  Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. A new study, forthcoming in Psychological Science, and led by Jason Moser at Michigan State University, expands on this ...

   Learn,Speed,Reason,Analysis     2012-02-24 05:04:46

  Bash Shell Scripting - 10 Seconds Guide

This Bash shell scripting guide is not a detailed study but a quick reference to the BASH syntax. So lets begin... Common environment variables PATH - Sets the search path for any executable command. Similar to the PATH variable in MSDOS. HOME - Home directory of the user. MAIL - Contains the path to the location where mail addressed to the user is stored. IFS - Contains a string of characters which are used as word seperators in the command line. The string normally consists of the spac...

   Bash,Shell,Linux,Tutorial,10 seconds,Shortcut key     2012-02-28 08:05:41

  Full disk encryption is too good, says US intelligence agency

You might be shocked to learn this, but when a quivering-lipped Chloe from 24 cracks the encryption on a terrorist’s hard drive in 30 seconds, the TV show is faking it. “So what? It’s just a TV show.” Well, yes, but it turns out that real federal intelligence agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA, also have a problem cracking encrypted hard disks — and according to a new research paper, this is a serious risk to national security.The study...

   FDE,Full disk encryption,Crack,Difficulty     2011-11-19 01:55:17

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