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

SEARCH KEYWORD -- TOP POSTS

  A return to good code

Stop doing this:public boolean foo() { if (true) {   return true;   }  else {   return false;   }}It always amazes me when I dig into an open source project, and I see code written by supposed experts, and reviewed by seasoned professionals, and nobody slaps the wrists of the developer who shoves return statements right in the middle of a method.Tell me, how hard is it to do this:public boolean foo() {   boolean flag = true;  ...

   Java,Code,Method,Return,Condition     2011-03-23 01:24:47

  Redis Cluster and Common Partition Techniques in Distributed Cache

In this post, I will discuss a few common partition techniques in distributed cache. Especially, I will elaborate on my understanding on the use of Redis Cluster. Please understand that at the time of writing, the latest version of Redis is 4.0.10. Many articles on the same topic have a different idea from this post. This is mainly because, those articles are probably outdated. In particular, they may refer to the Redis Cluster implementation in Redis 3. Redis Cluster has been improved...

   REDIS,DISTRIBUTED CACHE,CLOUD COMPUTING     2019-01-17 08:10:37

  People, processes and tools

Some years ago, one of my managers used to repeat this "Accenture truism" (or so he designated it): to fix or improve something, first you need the right people, then you need the right processes to help those people work together, then finally you need the right tools to support those processes. People, processes, and tools - in that order.This is even more true for tech startups than for corporations. As geeks, whenever we face a problem, we often start by looking for a tool to fix it. "Our te...

   Work,People,Process,Tool,Importance,Priority     2011-10-24 11:36:14

  9 Outstanding Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Transform Retail

Artificial intelligence has been around for quite some time. However, Amazon was the first company to apply it in the retail industry. Now, it automates most processes on the platform, replaces the people's’ work, and increases the productivity in every possible field. Here are nine useful ideas for you to start using AI in retail. 1. Tracking the Overstock and Out-of-Stock Items It is necessary to know exactly how many items are left in stock (or whether there are any left at all). Selle...

   BUSINESS,ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE     2019-01-22 08:41:02

  Create trigger in MySQL

To create trigger in MySQL, the syntax is :CREATE [DEFINER = { user | CURRENT_USER }] TRIGGER trigger_name trigger_time trigger_event ON tbl_name FOR EACH ROW trigger_bodyOne example is :DELIMITER %%DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS delete_commentCREATE TRIGGER delete_comment AFTER DELETE ON file_generate_infoFOR EACH ROW BEGIN DELETE FROM article_comment WHERE article_id=OLD.article_id;END%%The whole create trigger statement should be complete statement but not many separate com...

   MySQL,Trigger,Dilimiter,phpMyAdmin     2011-04-20 15:35:30

  The rather petite Internet of 1995

As you may know if you’re a regular reader of this blog, sometimes we like to take a trip down memory lane. It’s time for another one of those trips, to the murky past of the Internet and the dawning World Wide Web of 1995.Let’s start first with the people who actually use the Internet. How many were there back then?Worldwide Internet users in 1995Today there are almost 2 billion Internet users worldwide. In 2000, there were 361 million worldwide. But go back even farther in...

   Internet,Web,1995,Netscape,Microsoft,Net     2011-05-27 12:50:46

  Learning to Eat Well and Stay Healthy

Back in mid-2006, I documented my fairly dramatic weight loss in a series of blog postings. I went from a high of 224 pounds to a low of 164, which made for a total loss of 60 pounds (I’m about 6 feet tall). It’s interesting to go back and re-read what I wrote back then: Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web SiteThe Diet Plan and The Three HabitsThe Diet SpreadsheetDiet Tips: How To Eat Less Fast forward to January of 2011, and I had gained back about h...

   Healthy,Engineer,Eat well     2012-01-03 10:53:43

  Select top 3 values from each group in a table with SQL

Yesterday, my friend Liu Bing asked me a question about how to select top 3 values for each person in a database table using SQL. I think this question is interesting and it deserves some thoughts. Here I record down how to solve this issue. Assume we have a table which has two columns, one column contains the names of some people and the other column contains some values related to each person. One person can have more than one value. Each value has a numeric type. The question is we want to se...

   SQL,Correlated query,top 3     2013-05-23 03:21:25

  Don't Overload #nil?

There’s a popular post on Hacker News about writing confident code by, among other things, overloading Object#nil? and returning “null objects” instead of nil itself.DO NOT DO THIS.In Ruby, all objects (except nil itself) coerce to the boolean value true. Your object will be nil and true at the same time. Bad things will happen. Your coworkers will cry. Sad people from around the world will ask bewildering questions on your mailing list.Here’s what happen...

   Ruby,#nil,Overload,Object     2011-11-10 10:50:22

  Kicking ass together: How to improve coding skills as a group

Over the last year and a half, I have worked with a small group of students and staff to create an excellent online learning community at Mendicant University. Unfortunately, because Mendicant is something that we’re intentionally scaling at a very slow pace, we won’t directly reach as many people as we’d like to any time soon. In this post, I’ve collected some of the things that I think contribute to making Mendicant University a great place to learn. I’d love...

   Code skill,Group,Improvement,Efficiency     2012-01-31 23:59:33

RECENT