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  What It’s Really Like to Work at Google

Google. It’s one of the most common household words in today’s modern society, and yet for a company that is used by most of us essentially as an algorithm, it tends to trigger a highly emotional response when overheard. It’s a dream job for college students nearing graduation, a highly coveted invitation to lunch by friends and colleagues who work near campus, and the bane of existence for those who produce content for the Internet. For several years, most of the publ...

   Google,Work,Life,Workplace     2012-01-18 08:19:00

  What matters in life (and what doesn’t)

I’m probably too young to be writing on this topic but observing countless souls distressed by daily life made me think hard on what is that really matters in life. Undoubtedly, there are happy and sad phases and that’s part-and-parcel of life. But what I’m really bothered about is general, daily bitching about how miserable one’s life has become. You find people complaining about work, commute, relationships, other people’s attitudes & personalit...

   Life,Matater,Relationship,Experience,Material possession,Ego     2011-10-24 11:57:27

  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

  8 Things To Love & Hate About Outsourcing Employees

What is the dirtiest word in business? Chances are that the word ‘outsourcing’ comes to mind. Many Americans despise it, many business owners shy away from it and many entrepreneurs depend on it. Regardless of what side of the issue you are on, it is important to know that it exists and will continue to exist. Why? Because there are a lot of things to love about outsourcing.As a business owner and tech entrepreneur who exists in a hyper-competitive market, I have used outsourcing to...

   Employee,Outsourcing,Merits,Disadvantage     2011-11-12 10:16:13

  Why Flash didn’t work out on mobile devices

The debate over whether supporting the Adobe Flash plug-in on mobile devices is a feature or not is over. Last night, ZDNet got hold of a leaked Adobe announcement: It’s abandoning its work on Flash for mobile. It’s not a huge surprise that it came to this, since Adobe had been struggling to optimize the performance, and the tide has been turning toward HTML5.From the Adobe announcement ZDNet published:Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Fl...

   Flash,HTML5,Advantage,Merit,Mobile device,Support     2011-11-15 03:15:12

  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

  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

  Prototypes and Object Orientation

David Chisnall takes a look at the two dominant paradigms in object-oriented languages (classes and prototypes) and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each.Two terms are quite often confused when describing programming languages:class-based and object-oriented:Simula was the first class-based language. It provided classes (actually implemented using closures) as a means of encapsulating abstract data types.Smalltalk was the first object-oriented language. It provided a...

   Prototype,OOP,Differential,Comparison,Mo     2011-09-02 11:51:26

  We’re working our young people too hard

Yesterday, I shared an anecdote involving a school I once attended with a list. This anecdote eventually became the basis for a blog post. Traffic was fairly normal for the first few hours until it found its way onto hackernews.Then it exploded.The comments on both the original blog post and the post on hackernews filled almost immediately with opinionated hackers, teachers and students sharing similar experiences, discussing the problem and figuring out what should be done about it.Repeate...

   Education,Science,Teacher,Student,Exam     2011-11-17 08:38:01

  Why Memorizing is Ineffective

The information-age has burst into life, creating a wake of social change. Young people are growing up faster and more sophisticated, as raw information, tailored-entertainment, and branded-marketing are streamed into their rooms. But this technological exposure has not necessarily made them savvier or more capable of handling tomorrow’s challenges.The debates in public education over “school-choice” and standardized testing have missed the far more important issue. The real c...

   Memory,Memorization,Ineffective,Career     2011-11-19 02:13:41

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