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

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Text color

  Programming is a Super Power

In a society where technology and the Internet have become incredibly prominent elements of our daily lives, being able to program is akin to having a super power. In fact, a programmer is able to not only easily interact with cutting edge technology, but also to take advantage of said technology to transform pure thoughts into something as tangible and useful as software.I would argue that there has never been a more exciting time for being able to program. While being a part of our industry ba...

   Programming,Programmer,Super power     2011-04-01 00:12:13

  Here Are The 10 Highest-Paying Jobs At Google

South African job listing site JobVine compiled the following chart of the top ten salaries at Google, compiled from Glassdoor.The top pay is for contract positions leading software development. It's not uncommon to see contractors earn more salary than full-time employees at big tech companies, because they're often not able to get stock options and perks.For jobs within the company, it looks like directors of product management are the highest paid, which is fitting with Google's new...

   Google,Salary,Statistics,Job,Salary level     2011-10-14 11:24:42

  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

  Programming: the benefits of taking a break

This post lists several benefits of taking a break during programming.You work smarter, not harder. Once, I worked really hard on a feature. For two weeks, 12 hours a day, I put in a lot of effort. After those two weeks, I took a break and came up with several ideas that made much of the work unnecessary.You think more clearly. Being tired has a similar effect as being drunk. At the end of a day, I often kid myself that I’ll just get this one thing finished quickly to have a fre...

   Programming,Break,Rest,Refresh,New idea     2011-11-08 08:50:45

  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

  Uber’s audio recording plan in Brazil and Mexico

Uber has recently come out with a plan to introduce a new feature to its App in Brazil and Mexico. The feature will record the conversations between the driver and the passenger, with their consent. But consent here is a bit tricky. Basically, if the driver decides to turn on the recording feature, they are not obligated to warn the passenger and vice versa. Once the recording has been made and submitted to support for some kind of violation, neither of the two parties will have the ability...

   UBER,SECURITY,PRIVACY,VOICE RECORDING APP,NEW FEATURE     2019-11-21 09:20:36

  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

  5 Ways to Boost MySQL Scalability

There are a lot of scalability challenges we see with clients over and over. The list could easily include 20, 50 or even 100 items, but we shortened it down to the biggest five issues we see.1. Tune those queriesBy far the biggest bang for your buck is query optimization. Queries can be functionally correct and meet business requirements without being stress tested for high traffic and high load. This is why we often see clients with growing pains, and scalability challenges as their site becom...

   MySQL,Scalability,Methods,Implementation,Practice     2011-10-18 02:57:27

  Installing LAMP On Ubuntu

In this guide I will show you how to install a LAMP system. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. The guide is intended to help those who have very little knowlegde of using Linux. Install ApacheTo start off we will install Apache.1. Open up the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal).2. Copy/Paste the following line of code into Terminal and then press enter:sudo apt-get install apache23. The Terminal will then ask you for you're password, type it an...

   LAMP,Ubuntu,Linux,Apache,MySQL,,PHP     2011-04-28 05:20:02

  Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

The most productive programmers are orders of magnitude more productive than average programmers. But salaries usually fall within a fairly small range in any company. Even across the entire profession, salaries don’t vary that much. If some programmers are 10x more productive than others, why aren’t they paid 10x as much?Joel Spolsky gave a couple answers to this question in his most recent podcast. First, programmer productivity varies tremendously across the profession, but...

   Productivity,Salary,Efficiency,Programmer,Not match     2011-11-16 08:12:00

RECENT