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  Python internals: how callables work

[The Python version described in this article is 3.x, more specifically - the 3.3 alpha release of CPython.] The concept of a callable is fundamental in Python. When thinking about what can be "called", the immediately obvious answer is functions. Whether it’s user defined functions (written by you), or builtin functions (most probably implemented in C inside the CPython interpreter), functions were meant to be called, right? Well, there are also methods, but they’re not very ...

   Python,Callable work,Rationale     2012-03-24 05:20:27

  What does a contemporary web developer need to know?

The early ages of web era mainly consisted of webpages of text and links. At that time,Netscape was the still dominant of web browser market. As a web developer, you could develop web apps(or better to call web pages) easily with knowledge of HTML only. But with the evolution of web, new technologies came out, we can see more robust web apps around us everywhere. Today as a web developer, the ability to run and configure a web server and edit HTML to create some simple web pages has lost almost ...

   Web design,Advice     2013-12-20 06:31:51

  Should All Web Traffic Be Encrypted?

The prevalence of free, open WiFi has made it rather easy for a WiFi eavesdropper to steal your identity cookie for the websites you visit while you're connected to that WiFi access point. This is something I talked about in Breaking the Web's Cookie Jar. It's difficult to fix without making major changes to the web's infrastructure. In the year since I wrote that, a number of major websites have "solved" the WiFi eavesdropping problem by either making encrypted HTTPS web traffic an accou...

   Web traffic,Security,HTTPS.Encryption,Wifi     2012-02-24 05:02:58

  When to Make a Mobile Web Application

I believe that unless your application meets one of these native application criteria, you should not create a native application, but should instead focus on building a mobile web application. Like I said before, I’m a big fan of native applications and I feel that there are a lot of great innovative and market opportunities here, but mobile web apps are the only long-term viable platform for mobile content, services, and applications. Native applications don’t service t...

   Web app,Situation,Condition,Native application     2011-12-12 02:45:52

  "Programmer" is an Overgeneralization

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." - Donald Knuth Earlier today, I came across a post during a google-fu session that claimed that no one should use the C++ standard library function make_heap, because almost nobody uses it correctly. I immediately started mentally ranting about how utterly ridiculous this claim is, because anyone whose gone to a basic algorithm class would know how to properly use make_heap. Then I started thinking about all the ...

   Programmer,Overgeneration,Overload     2012-03-13 08:13:16

  Pointers, arrays, and string literals

A recently posted question on Stack Overflow highlighted a common misconception about the role of pointers and arrays held by many programmers learning C.The confusion stems from a misunderstanding concerning the role of pointers and strings in C. A pointer is an address in memory. It often points to an index in an array, such as in the function strtoupper in the following code:void strtoupper(char *str) { if (str) { // null ptr check, courtesy of Michael while (...

   char pointer,initialization,literal,cann     2011-09-22 13:29:23

  That “JavaScript not available” case

During some interesting discussions on Twitter yesterday I found that there is now more than ever a confusion about JavaScript dependence in web applications and web sites. This is a never ending story but it seems to me to flare up ever time our browsing technology leaps forward. I encountered this for the first time back in the days of DHTML. We pushed browsers to their limits with our lovely animated menus and 3D logos (something we of course learned not to do again, right?) and we were ...

   JavaScript,Security,Banned,Reason     2012-01-04 02:37:35

  Understanding the "this" keyword in JavaScript

Many people get tripped up by the this keyword in JavaScript. I think the confusion comes from people reasonably expecting this to work like “this” does in Java or the way people use “self” in Python. Although this is sometimes used to similar effect, it’s nothing like “this” in Java or other languages. And while it’s a little harder to understand, its behavior isn’t magic. In fact, this follows a relatively small set of simple rules. This...

   JavaScript,this,understanding     2012-03-29 13:48:59

  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

  Performance is a Feature

We've always put a heavy emphasis on performance at Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Not just because we're performance wonks (guilty!), but because we think speed is a competitive advantage. There's plenty of experimental data proving that the slower your website loads and displays, the less people will use it. [Google found that] the page with 10 results took 0.4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took 0.9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a seco...

   Website,Perfomance,Optimization     2011-07-02 01:52:12

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