SEARCH KEYWORD -- Outsource Android App Development

  The 15 Golden Rules of UI design and flow.

Last night a good friend of mine showed me the latest Need for Speed game on the iphone / ipad. Quite an impressive feat of rendering and a relatively good game to boot. However, the front end, wow, a classic case in UI mis-engineering. Loads of stats, pages and pages of bits and pieces to wade through – a classic case of over stimulating the player with lots of decisions they have no business making – stuff that will significantly change their game play experience but being...

   UI design,Game design,Feature     2012-04-05 12:20:18

  The Pitfall of WebSocket Disconnections Caused by Browser Power-Saving Mechanisms

Preface Recently, while using WebSocket (WS) connections, we encountered frequent disconnection issues, occurring hundreds of times per day for a single user. Although using the auto-reconnect feature of socket.io allowed us to quickly restore connections after disconnections, it did not guarantee that every reconnection would successfully receive WS messages. Therefore, we conducted several investigations and tests. Ultimately, we identified the root cause of the issue: the browser's power-savi...

   WEBSOCKET,JAVASCRIPT,POWER SAVING,TROUBLESHOOTING     2024-06-23 01:19:39

  HeartBleed: Should C be blamed for the HeartBleed bug?

There is a discussion about the security of applications written in C on Hacker News recently after the report of HeartBleed bug in OpenSSL. In this discussion, some people are saying that the applications written in C are unsafe. It seems all or most of the faults should be laid on C. I think this is biased. The language itself should not be blamed.Safety is a relative term for programming languages. No language is absolutely safe. We claim some languages like Java and C# are safer than C/C++ b...

   C,HeartBleed,Analysis,Code review     2014-04-14 03:52:55

  do {...} while (0) in macros

If you are a C programmer, you must be familiar with macros. They are powerful and can help you ease your work if used correctly. However, if you don't define macros carefully, they may bite you and drive you crazy. In many C programs, you may see a special macro definition which may seem not so straightforward. Here is one example: #define __set_task_state(tsk, state_value) \ do { (tsk)->state = (state_value); } while (0) There are many this kind of macros which uses do{...}while(0)...

   C,macro,C++     2014-01-23 07:16:13

  Using C for a specialized data store

Pixenomics stores and transports 1.2 million pixels from the server to the client. During development we played with various methods to store and process this. Our ultimate goal was to send the entire board in under 1 second. During the stages of prototyping we used a MySQL database without thinking too much about performance. With a mere 2,000 pixels we quickly realised this wasn’t even usable as a demo. Changing the storage engine to memory was much better but still obviously unu...

   C,Data store,Efficiency,Performance     2012-03-07 05:09:38

  What to put on whiteboard during an interview

As a programmer, you may go through different kinds of programming tests while interviewing for jobs. The most famous and difficult one may be the whiteboard test for lots of people. Usually the interviewer will give the candidate an algorithm problem or case study and ask the candidate to implement the algorithm with his/her favorite programming language. The code to be written is not too much but it requires the candidate to thoroughly consider different edge cases. So wha...

   TIPS,INTERVIEW,WHITEBOARD TEST     2014-08-29 20:34:52

  Web programs written in C++ are no big deal

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. She wanted to try putting together a weekend "hackathon" just to see what we could build. It would be one of those fun things where we just start tinkering and see what comes out of it. Somehow, this conversation got to the topic of libraries, programming languages, and frameworks. Then it got a little weird. I guess the current "shiny" thing is still more-or-less Ruby, and particularly when used with Rails. Oh, I suppo...

   C++,Web design,Library,Web app     2012-01-11 11:57:26

  What will happen after Baidu acquires PPS?

One month ago there was some news that Ai Qiyi would acquire PPS through Baidu Now this has been confirmed, Baidu will spend $400,000,000 on acquiring Shanghai Public Source Network Co., Ltd. (PPS). After completion of the acquisition, Ai Qiyi will likely change the overall content and production line of PPS so that they can complement each other's shortages. Many people are optimistic about this merger, Ai Qiyi can complement its shortage on PC side and PPS can also get more copyrighted film an...

   Ai Qiyi,Sohu,Youku,PPS,acquisition     2013-04-26 22:53:12

  Leaving comments in real life

As a programmer I like to write comments because I know that some future person (often me) is going to need to know something about my code that won't be immediately obvious from reading it. Here's a recent example from my homebrew display's code:// protocol_init: Set up a newly powered-on string of lights.  The lights are arranged// in an array wired diagonally starting from the bottom left.  For ease of programming// it's better if they are given numbers which correspond to coor...

   Comment,Programming,Style,Format,Coding standard     2011-11-15 11:42:19

  Program Or Be Programmed

On Thursday night I gave a talk at NYU Poly and in the Q&A a young man asked me for advice for "those who aren't technical". I said he should try to get technical. The next morning I met with a bunch of Sloan Business School students doing a trek through NYC. A young woman asked me the same question. I gave her the same answer.I don't mean that everyone should become a software engineer. I do mean that everyone should understand software engineering (or whatever technical...

   Program,Technical,Basic knowledge     2011-11-10 10:31:02

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