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  Why Flash didn’t work out on mobile devices

The debate over whether supporting the Adobe Flash plug-in on mobile devices is a feature or not is over. Last night, ZDNet got hold of a leaked Adobe announcement: It’s abandoning its work on Flash for mobile. It’s not a huge surprise that it came to this, since Adobe had been struggling to optimize the performance, and the tide has been turning toward HTML5.From the Adobe announcement ZDNet published:Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Fl...

   Flash,HTML5,Advantage,Merit,Mobile device,Support     2011-11-15 03:15:12

  Why We Moved Off The Cloud

Cloud computing is often positioned as a solution to scalability problems. In fact, it seems like almost every day I read a blog post about a company moving infrastructure to the cloud. At Mixpanel, we did the opposite. I’m writing this post to explain why and maybe even encourage some other startups to consider the alternative.First though, I wanted to write a short bit about the advantages of cloud servers since they are ideal for some use cases.Low initial costs. Specifically, you...

   Cloud,Cloud computing,Mixpanel,Get off,Disadvantage,Drawback     2011-10-28 10:22:32

  Learning Go

This year I'm going to try a new programming language - Go. I had this notion that compiled, type based languages are overly complex and reduces developer efficiency. However, after doing some reading about Go, it appeared to take a different path from the rest and felt like something worth trying. Acquainting a programming language is a journey. First few steps you take with it will define your perception about it. These first few steps went well for me with Go and it felt lik...

   Go,Google,Learning,Resource     2012-01-05 08:09:55

  Set Theory in C++11

Have you ever felt the need to perform set theoretic operations on types? Not really? Me neither, but I thought it’s a fun thing to try out. So, if you ever feel the need of using type sets, C++11 makes it quite easy to do so. Especially variadic templates allow for a much more condensed syntax compared to type list constructs formerly used. (Disclaimer: This is rather a proof of concept, but maybe somebody comes up with a useful scenario.) Let’s start by d...

   C++,set theory,Math     2012-03-11 13:15:55

  Lessons Learned while Introducing a New Programming Language

I've used a lot of languages (professionally) over the years: (off the top of my head) Cold Fusion, HTML, Javascript, php, SQL, CSS, ASP(classic & .net), C#, Ruby, Flex, Java, & Clojure. Each language has pros and cons. Being a programmer, it's easiest to discuss the cons - and in general I believe it was best said:I hate all programming languages - Matt FoemmelI think it's important to start with this in mind. At some point you're going to hate what you're advocating, so imagine h...

   Experience,New language,Tips,Risk     2012-03-05 05:13:59

  Why Every Professional Should Consider Blogging

I often argue that professionals should share their knowledge online via blogging. The catch is that virtually anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort, and blogging is not an exception to this statement. So before committing your energy to such an endeavor, you may rightfully stop and wonder what’s in it for you. Is blogging really worth it? In this article, I briefly illustrate some of the main benefits that directly derive from running a technical blog. 1. Blogging can impr...

   Developer,Blogging,Share knowledge     2012-01-29 04:30:07

  The Basics of jQuery

So, a while back I had an internal presentation at work about this topic. A few good friends in the community took a look at my slides, and they thought it would make a nice blog post because “there can’t be too many good posts about jQuery introduction and best-practices.” Whether this post is going to be good or not, is up to you but I’ll try to outline what jQuery is, and how you can start working with it. For most of you, this will just be a re-cap and probably...

   JavaScript,jQuery,Framework,Basic     2012-03-01 04:57:18

  Why PHP Was a Ghetto

Note: I wrote this over a month ago, but decided not to publish it until now.I was talking with the Co-founder of a pretty cool start-up in DUMBO the other day about why the non-PHP development world generally has such disdain for PHP and the community surrounding it. He brought up an interesting point that stuck with me, largely because I hadn’t heard it before.If you’re unaware of the usual beef most developers have with PHP, it tends to revolve around:Ug...

   PHP,Framework,MVC     2011-05-06 00:35:37

  Preprocessor magic:Default Arguments in C

This post is for programmers who like C or for one reason or another can't use anything else but C in one of their projects. The advantages of having default arguments is not something that needs convincing. It's just very nice and convenient to have them. C++ offers the ability to define them but C under the C99 standard has no way to allow it. In this post I will detail two ways I know of implementing default arguments in C. If a reader happens to know additional ways please share in ...

   C,Preprocessor,Default arguments     2012-02-19 06:17:04

  Preparing for the real costs of cloud computing

Computerworld - At a cloud computing conference in New York in June, a number of speakers pointed out that the cloud is moving past the hype stage and is beginning to deliver tangible benefits to organizations. These improvements include increased flexibility and agility. But moving to the cloud can also mean added costs, some of which might be unexpected, according to IT executives whose organizations have implemented cloud services or are considering them. While these types of costs ...

   Cloud computing,Cost,Chanllenges,Platfor     2011-08-23 07:48:24