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  10 Secrets of Successful Leaders

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” But, becoming a great leader isn’t easy. Successfully maneuvering a team through the ups and downs of starting a new business can be one of the greatest challenges a small-business owner faces.Leadership is one of the areas that many entrepreneurs tend to overlook, according leadership coach John C. Maxwell, whose books...

   Leader,Skill,Calm,Trust,Involvement     2011-11-03 03:36:56

  What Can We Learn From Dennis Ritchie?

As we noted earlier this week, one of the founding fathers of UNIX and the creator of C, Dennis Ritchie, passed away last weekend. While I feel that many in computer science and related fields knew of Ritchie’s importance to the growth and development of, well, everything to do with computing, I think it’s valuable to look back at his accomplishments and place him high in the CS pantheon already populated by Lovelace, Turing, and (although this crowing will be controversial, at lea...

   C,Father,Dennis Ritchie,Death,Father of C,UNIX     2011-10-17 10:12:02

  Eight C++ programming mistakes the compiler won’t catch

C++ is a complex language, full of subtle traps for the unwary. There is an almost infinite number of ways to screw things up. Fortunately, modern compilers are pretty good at detecting a large number of these cases and notifying the programmer via compile errors or warnings. Ultimately, any error that is compiler-detectable becomes a non-issue if properly handled, as it will be caught and fixed before the program leaves development. At worst, a compiler-detectable error results in los...

   C++,Compiler,Error detection     2012-04-08 09:55:20

  C++ Versus Objective-C

What will programming in Objective-C mean to the C++ programmer Different Object Oriented Languages Almost all of us have heard the term object oriented programming, and most of us have used C++. How will Apple's purchase of NeXT, and NeXT's framework using Objective-C affect us as we develop software? If we know C++ already, how hard will it be to get up to speed on Objective-C? Many people will agree that once they understand the concepts of object oriented programming it doesn't matter...

   C++,Objective-C,OOP,Comparison,Methods,Philosohpy     2011-12-12 07:51:40

  YOU'RE A DEVELOPER, SO WHY DO YOU WORK FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

As a developer, you are sitting on a goldmine. Do you even realize it? No, seriously, a @#$% goldmine!Never in modern history has it been so easy to create something from scratch, with little or no capital and a marketing model that is limited only by your imagination.Think about the biggest websites you visit or use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, or even Google for that matter -- all of them were created by developers who created something from little more than an id...

   Developer,Work,Startup,Money,Idea,Time     2011-11-06 14:35:48

  Functional Programming in C++

Probably everyone reading this has heard “functional programming” put forth as something that is supposed to bring benefits to software development, or even heard it touted as a silver bullet.  However, a trip to Wikipedia for some more information can be initially off-putting, with early references to lambda calculus and formal systems.  It isn’t immediately clear what that has to do with writing better software. My pragmatic summary:  A large fraction of th...

   C++,Functional programming     2012-04-28 06:16:37

  The trap of the performance sweet spot

This post is about JavaScript performance but I would like to start it by telling a story that might seem unrelated to JS. Please bear with me if you don’t like C.A story of a C programmer writing JavaScriptMr. C. is a C programmer as you can probably guess from his name. Today he was asked by his boss to write a very simple function: given an array of numbered 2d points calculate vector sum of all even numbered points... He opens his favorite text editor and quickly types somet...

   C,JavaScript,Sweet spot,Memory,Low level,Trap     2011-11-06 14:45:01

  #46 – Why software sucks

No one makes bad software on purpose. No benevolent programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people and making them cry. Bad software, or bad anything, happens because making things is hard, making good things doubly so. The three things that make it difficult are: Possessing the diverse skills needed not to suck.Understanding who you’re making the thing for.Orchestrating the interplay of skills, egos and constraints over the course of...

   Software design,Sucks,Software industry     2012-03-19 13:10:37

  Thoughts on Python 3

I spent the last couple of days thinking about Python 3's current state a lot. While it might not appear to be the case, I do love Python as a language and especially the direction it's heading in. Python has been not only part of my life for the last couple of five years, it has been the largest part by far. Let there be a warning upfront: this is a very personal post. I counted a hundred instances of a certain capital letter in this text. That's because I am very grateful for all the opport...

   Python,Python 3,Feature,Drawback,Embrace     2011-12-07 08:46:47

  Developing Game Audio with the Web Audio API

Caution: This article discusses APIs that are not yet fully standardized and still in flux. Be cautious when using experimental APIs in your own projects. Introduction Audio is a huge part of what makes multimedia experiences so compelling. If you've ever tried watching a movie with the sound off, you've probably noticed this. Games are no exception! My fondest video game memories are of the music and sound effects. Now, in many cases nearly two decades after playing my favorites, I still c...

   Web Audio,HTML5,Game audio     2012-04-15 01:25:23

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