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  10 super useful PHP snippets you probably haven’t seen

When working with PHP, it is very useful to have a “toolbox” of handy functions and code snippets that can save lots of time when needed. Today, I’m going to show you 10 super useful code snippets that you probably never heard of. Text messaging with PHP using the TextMagic API If for some reason, you need to send text messages to your clients cell phones, you should definitely have a look to TextMagic. They provide an easy API which allow you to send SMS to cell...

   PHP,Code,Snippet,Useful code segment     2012-01-19 11:07:16

   Python – parallelizing CPU-bound tasks with multiprocessing

In a previous post on Python threads, I briefly mentioned that threads are unsuitable for CPU-bound tasks, and multiprocessing should be used instead. Here I want to demonstrate this with benchmark numbers, also showing that creating multiple processes in Python is just as simple as creating multiple threads. First, let’s pick a simple computation to use for the benchmarking. I don’t want it to be completely artificial, so I’ll use a dumbed-down version of factorization...

   Python,Multitasking,Multiprocessing,CPU bound     2012-01-17 11:38:22

  The future of IT will be reduced to three kinds of jobs

Takeaway: The IT profession and the IT job market are in the midst of seismic changes that are going to shift the focus to three types of jobs. There’s a general anxiety that has settled over much of the IT profession in recent years. It’s a stark contrast to the situation just over a decade ago. At the end of the 1990s, IT pros were the belles of the ball. The IT labor shortage regularly made headlines and IT pros were able to command excellent salar...

   IT,Potential,Consultant,Developer,Projec     2011-07-27 08:46:59

  The header element in HTML 5

Currently HTML5 is exciting and anyone who want to builds web pages is looking forward to implementing HTML5 new tags into their sites. Definitely HTML5 tags are very rich in functions that make life much easier for both webmasters and end users Within the HTML5 specfication we can see that there have been a significant number of new tags added, one of these the <header> element is what we’ll be covering here. We will talk about when to use it, when not to use it. As we ar...

   HTML5,Header     2012-05-03 09:12:58

  JSON in JavaScript

When sending an AJAX request to the server, the response can have two formats : XMLHttpRequest.responseXML to access data with XML format and XMLHttpRequest.responseText to access data with string format. XML is the standard data transfer format, but one weakness is it's troublesome to parse and retrieve the data. JSON(JavaScript Object Notation) is a light weight data interchange format, we call it the JavaScript object representation. The advantage of using JSON as the data format is itself is...

   JSON,JavaScript     2013-05-04 23:25:57

  Parallel Javascript

Lately the ideas for a parallel, shared memory JavaScript have begun to take shape. I’ve been discussing with various JavaScript luminaries and it seems like a design is starting to emerge. This post serves as a documentation of the basic ideas; I’m sure the details will change as we go along. User Model The model is that a JavaScript worker (the “parent”) may spawn a number of child tasks (the “children”). The parent is suspended while the children exe...

   Parallel JavaScript,API,Spawn,Parent,Task     2012-01-11 12:02:00

  Learning Is More Important Than Knowing

Although DuckDuckGo's success is based more on ideology than technology, you'd have to be a pretty arrogant technologist to not appreciate and be impressed with what this small team (for a long time, 1 person) has accomplished. And while DuckDuckGo teaches us a number of valuable lessons (about business, and privacy), to me, the most important, is that good programmers should be measured by what they can learn, not what they already know. Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo's creator, has been wo...

   Learning,Knowing,Google,DuckDuckGo     2012-04-18 07:17:53

  How big are PHP arrays (and values) really? (Hint: BIG!)

Upfront I want to thank Johannes and Tyrael for their help in finding some of the more hidden memory usage. In this post I want to investigate the memory usage of PHP arrays (and values in general) using the following script as an example, which creates 100000 unique integer array elements and measures the resulting memory usage: <?php $startMemory = memory_get_usage(); $array = range(1, 100000); echo memory_get_usage() - $startMemory, ' bytes'; How much would you expect it to ...

   PHP,Array,Memory occupation,Garbage collection     2011-12-16 10:06:04

  Productivity tips for freelance web designers

There are lots of great things about freelance, such as not being tied to a desk, flexible working hours and little, if any, supervision. All freelance web designers probably realize that one of the biggest challenges of their job is the issue of productivity. How to motivate yourself and stay productive every day with no external supervisors telling us to complete a task right now? Here are five practical productivity hacks for all freelance web designers who want to boost their performance. 1....

   productivity tips, freelance, web designers, productivity hacks     2015-02-13 01:40:29

  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

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