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  How Computers Boot Up

The previous post described motherboards and the memory map in Intel computers to set the scene for the initial phases of boot. Booting is an involved, hacky, multi-stage affair – fun stuff. Here’s an outline of the process: An outline of the boot sequence Things start rolling when you press the power button on the computer (no! do tell!). Once the motherboard is powered up it initializes its own firmware – the chipset and other tidbits – and tries to ...

   Computer,Boot-up,Rationale     2012-04-11 13:43:02

  ECMAScript 5 Objects and Properties

ECMAScript 5 is on its way. Rising from the ashes of ECMAScript 4, which got scaled way back and became ECMAScript 3.1, which was then re-named ECMAScript 5 (more details)- comes a new layer of functionality built on top of our lovable ECMAScript 3. Update: I've posted more details on ECMAScript 5 Strict Mode, JSON, and More. There are a few new APIs included in the specification but the most interesting functionality comes into play in the Object/Property code. This new code gives you th...

   ECMAScript,Object,Property     2012-01-29 04:38:50

  Android hardware fails more than iPhone, BlackBerry; repairs cost carriers $2 billion

Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year according to a new year-long WDS study that tracked 600,000 support calls around the globe. Android’s popularity and the introduction of a number of low-cost smartphones has put a strain on the wireless business model, WDS noted in its report. “Deployment by more than 25 OEMs and lower-cost product coming to market is leading to higher than average rates of hardware failures and, in turn, return and repair cos...

   Android,iPhone,Blackberry,Hardware,Cost     2011-11-03 13:26:42

  Audio API in Android development

Mobile devices of the first generation were not capable of playing any sounds except monophonic ringtones. Today any smartphone platform supports playback, record and to some extent manipulation of digital sound, often up to CD quality.Android is no exception to that. Even older 1.5 devices can do a lot of things with digital audio. However, due to lack of guidance, a developer who is doing his first audio feature might miss some of the available API facilities, or might choose the approach that...

   Audio,Android,MediaPlayer,AudioTrack,Sou     2011-04-21 11:32:32

  Signs that you're a bad programmer

1. Inability to reason about codeReasoning about code means being able to follow the execution path ("running the program in your head") while knowing what the goal of the code is.SymptomsThe presence of "voodoo code", or code that has no effect on the goal of the program but is diligently maintained anyway (such as initializing variables that are never used, calling functions that are irrelevant to the goal, producing output that is not used, etc.)Executing idempotent functions multiple times (...

   Sign,Programmer,Characteristics,Knowledge,Skill     2011-10-20 08:56:16

  FTP Must Die

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is specified in RFC 959, published in October 1985. The attempt in this specification is to satisfy the diverse needs of users of maxi-hosts, mini-hosts, personal workstations, and TACs, with a simple, and easily implemented protocol design.That's from the introduction. Does anyone here know what a TAC is? I don't. I had to look it up, since the acronym wasn't even expanded in the RFC. It took three tries in Google, and I finally found it in some obscur...

   FTP,Future,Death,Trend,Protocol     2012-02-06 08:13:36

  Prototypes and Inheritance in JavaScript

Forget everything you know about object-oriented programming. Instead, I want you to think about race cars. Yes – race cars. Recently I was watching the 24 Hours of Le Mans –a popular racing event in France. The fastest cars in the race are the Le Mans Prototypes. Although these cars are built by car manufacturers like Audi and Peugeot, they are not cars you’ll see on the streets and highways of your home town. They are built exclusively for high-speed endurance ra...

   JavaScript,Prototype,Inheritance     2012-02-27 04:55:22

  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

  The Go Pointer Magic

Go is a language with the pointer type, by which we can Pass pointer into a function and update value in-place. Add methods to a struct as (* T) A, which is different from (T) A(). However, the pointer is type-safe in Go, meaning that there are such restrictions of the pointer. Different types of pointers are unconvertible. Pointer type cannot be used for calculation. Pointer types cannot be compared, either == nor !=. No mutual assignment between different pointer-...

   GOLANG,POINTER,UNSAFE     2021-10-03 02:18:57

  JavaScript is now a necessity

I've long looked at JavaScript as a second-class citizen in the programming world. Early on, it was the source of numerous security problems; it was a nice bit of glue to patch together HTML applications with a bit of styling, but nobody would use it for serious code; and so forth. Java, Ruby, Python, they were the languages for doing real work. But my attitude toward JavaScript has changed completely in the past few years. JavaScript has "grown up." I'm sure there are many JavaScript dev...

   JavaScript,HTML5,Necessary,Client langua     2011-06-24 00:50:14

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