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  Whatever works for you

In my earlier 20s when I knew everything, I was a much bigger evangelist for my technology choices. I’m accused of fanboyism a lot more these days, but only because Hacker News keeps sending huge waves of people here who tell me I’m an idiot. But I used to be much more annoying with pushing my choices onto others. I’ve naturally reduced such evangelism as I approach 30 and realize I don’t know anything, but I’m now making a much more conscious effort to s...

   Choice,Product,Usability,Fittability     2011-11-29 08:39:09

  5 Reasons to Join a Startup After Graduating

After I wrote my last post, a surprising number of people emailed me asking why I decided to join a startup after graduating from Duke. Many of those I heard from face similar decisions today: either they are college seniors choosing between a big company and a startup, or they are recent graduates who work at a big company and are thinking about making the switch. What’s interesting is that most are already leaning towards the startup career path: it seems they just want someone to ...

   Startup,Graduation,Work,Advice,Passion,Learn     2011-11-23 08:12:13

  Microsoft unveils a new logo

When releasing Windows 8, many people thought that Microsoft would use the blue logo as company's logo. But we are "cheated", Microsoft unveils a new logo. Watch video below. Since unveiling its first logo in 1977, Microsoft has changed its logo a few times, they are  In 1977, its "Micro-Soft" Microsoft "blibbet" logo, filed August 26, 1982 at the USPTO and used until 1987. Microsoft "Pac-Man" logo, designed by Scott Baker and used from 1987 to 2012 with the 1994–2002 slogan"W...

   Microsoft,Logo,Windows 8     2012-08-23 20:04:03

  Former Microsoft Executive Vice President Qi Lu joins Baidu

Former Microsoft Executive Vice President Qi Lu joined Baidu(The largest search engine in China) on January 1, 2017. Qi will be group president and COO at Baidu. He will be in charge of Baidu's products, technology, sales and marketing and operations. And he will be the second most powerful person in Baidu just behind Robin Li, the founder and CEO of Baidu. At the same time, Robin Li will step away from daily operation of Baidu. In a statement, Robin Li said “Dr. Lu possesses a ...

   MICROSOFT,CHINA,BAIDU,NEWS,QI LU     2017-01-18 08:53:42

  Interview Programming Problems Done Right

Introduction Why 37signals Doesn't Hire Programmers Based on Brainteasers and my comment on HN generated a lot of responses, so much so that I'm writing this post to properly explain the essence of a good (IMHO) interview programming problem. Pascal's Triangle Pascal's Triangle is a shortcut for getting coefficients most often used binomial probability. The root element is 1. Every other element is the sum of the one or two above it (diagonally left and diagonally right). There are severa...

   Interview,Programming problem,Pascal,Triangle     2012-01-06 09:46:43

  Why I love Common Lisp and hate Java

“Common what?” is a common reply I get when I mention Common Lisp. Perhaps rightly so, since Common Lisp is not all that common these days. Developed in the sixties, it is one of the oldest programming languages out there. In its heydays it was used mostly for Artificial Intelligence research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the like, and therefore has a lingering association with AI. People not in AI shy away from Lisp. Common Lisp is a powerful and versatile program...

   Lisp,Java,Comparison,Common Lisp     2012-01-30 05:48:16

  The problem isn’t you. The problem is the problem.

A friendly reminder: The problem isn’t you. The problem is the problem. –Steven Pressfield Some stuff is just hard. We start thinking we messed up. That it’s an issue with us. But it’s not. The work is hard and the problem is hard. You need to solve the problem, not fix yourself. The quote above is from Steven Pressfield’s incredible Do the Work. The audiobook (that’s a store link) is about 90 minutes long, so it fits in a s...

   Business,Problem,Strategy     2011-12-07 08:37:29

  Replacing small C programs with Haskell

C is the classic go-to tool for small programs that need to be really fast. When scripts.mit.edu needed a small program to be a glorified cat that also added useful HTTP headers to the beginning of its output, there was no question about it: it would be written in C, and it would be fast; the speed of our static content serving depended on it! (The grotty technical details: our webserver is based off of a networked filesystem, and we wanted to avoid giving Apache too many credentials in ca...

   C,Haskell,Small program     2012-01-03 10:51:39

  What's on your Learning List?

How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning? For a while, I didn’t have a real good solution. Something would trigger me to remember “Oh yeah! I really wanted to learn more about that”. I would spend the evening doing busy learning - it seemed like I was learning but I really wasn’t. Instead of trying to do Deliberate Practice, I’d fool myself into thinking I was investing my time wisely by reading blog posts and examples but no...

   Learning list,Conscious,Study,Programming     2011-12-05 12:44:39

  What we still can’t do client-side

With the rise of all these APIs and the browser race to implement them, you’d think that currently we can do pretty much everything in JavaScript and even if we currently can’t due to browser support issues, we will once the specs are implemented. Unfortunately, that’s not true. There are still things we can’t do, and there’s no specification to address them at the time of this writing and no way to do them with the APIs we already have (or if there is a ...

   Chanllenge,Client side,Server side     2012-01-10 07:22:31

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