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  Why Javascript is a Joy

I’m probably a bit biased – being a front-end web developer for a few years will do that – but I really enjoy writing Javascript. I’ve recently retreated from pure coding the last few months, but I got an opportunity this past week to jump back into some tasks, and it has reminded me how fun it is to dive into our[1] front-end codebase. Yes, Javascript can be surprisingly elegant yet completely infuriating, and all on the same line of code; for a long time, ...

   JavaScript,Speed,Simplicity,Malleable     2012-03-26 15:00:31

  Samsung Overtakes Apple as World’s Biggest Smartphone Seller

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Samsung Electronics Co. overtook Apple Inc. in the last quarter to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor amid a widening technology and legal battle between the two companies.Samsung shipped 27.8 million smartphones in the last quarter, taking 23.8 percent of the market, Milton Keynes, U.K.- based Strategy Analytics said in an e-mailed statement today. Apple’s 17.1 million shipments, comprising 14.6 percent of the market, pushed the Cupertino, Californ...

   Samsung,Apple,Samrtphone,Overtake,Samsung No. 1     2011-10-28 10:18:12

  Five Reasons Why Microsoft's Windows Phone Will Make A Big Splash In The Smartphone Market

The rave reviews for the latest iteration of Microsoft’s Windows Phone aren’t the only reason Microsoft will do better in the smart phone industry than it did in the MP3 player market. Whereas the Zune never really offered anything substantially different from the iPod and never pushed any real boundaries, Microsoft’s latest push into the mobile operating system business is much more bold. Microsoft isn’t rushing it this time – and it shows. So far, tech ...

   WP7,Windows Phone,Zune,2012,Nokia Lumia 900     2012-01-09 08:52:52

  Transparency in Cloud Services

37signals recently launched public “Uptime Reports” for their applications (announcement). The reaction on Hacker News was rather tepid, but I think it’s a positive development, and I applaud 37signals for stepping forward. Reliability of cloud applications is a real concern, and there’s not nearly enough hard data out there. Not all products are equally reliable; even within 37signals, the new reports show a 3:1 variation in downtime across apps. That said, ...

   Cloud,Transapency,37signals,Announcement     2012-01-10 07:24:02

  Build your own internet search engine - Part 2

After having started to build my own internet search engine as described in a previous blog post, I now have read some papers and books about web search engine architecture and information retrieval to complete my hobby project. Here is a list of papers and books that I highly recommend to anybody who is interested in this topic: 1. Google: data structures and algorithms by Petteri Huuhka 2. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by the Google founde...

   Search engine,Paper,Database,Data structure     2011-12-22 08:25:59

  What makes a great IT project manager

Since IT project management is a field in constant flux, there's no one universal definition of a great IT project manager. Still, there are some skills and features that can be easily adapted to any working environment, meeting new organizational needs and consequent challenges. A significant problem is the fact that project manager will mean different things to different people (even within the same organization!). Some say that the greatest IT project managers are those who are able to balanc...

   project management     2015-07-06 02:15:46

  India: The World's Secret Silicon Valley

You might not know it, but a key cog in the global innovation machine is hiding in plain sight in the world's largest democracyReutersFor many firms, developing new products for consumers around the world is the most visible manifestation of innovation - the "real deal." But many people still see India as a place where other people's ideas are made or executed and not where innovation begins. (After all, you don't hear about an Indian equivalent to Google, iPod or Viagra.) Bu they're wrong. In m...

   Innovation,India,Silicon Valley,GE,Chip,Intel     2011-11-16 08:06:54

  How Integers Should Work (In Systems Programming Languages)

My last post outlined some of the possibilities for integer semantics in programming languages, and asked which option was correct. This post contains my answers. Just to be clear: I want practical solutions, but I’m not very interested by historical issues or backwards compatibility with any existing language, and particularly not with C and C++. We’ll start with: Premise 1: Operations on default integer types return the mathematically correct result or else trap. This is th...

   Number,Algorithm,System,Embedded system     2011-12-05 12:48:41

  Erlang Style Concurrency

Introduction On an evolutionary scale of innovation from one to ten (one being Bloomberg and Citi Group, eight being Google and Cirque Du Soleil, and ten being the company you couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams), the company I work for is about a three1. Being employed by this bastion of ingenuity affords me certain opportunities I can't get elsewhere. For example, every developer gets to interview potential...

   Erlang,Concurrency,Lock,Message,Innovation     2012-01-03 10:44:44

  The ugliest C feature:

<tgmath.h> is a header provided by the standard C library, introduced in C99 to allow easier porting of Fortran numerical software to C. Fortran, unlike C, provides “intrinsic functions”, which are a part of the language and behave more like operators. While ordinary (“external”) functions behave similarly to C functions with respect to types (the types of arguments and parameters must match and the restult type is fixed), intrinsic functions accept arguments of...

   C,,Fortran,Intrinsic functions,C99,Ugly     2011-12-26 08:33:27

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