Continuous improvement

by Ochronus on November 16, 2011

ImprovementWe developers are the masters of an ever-changing field. What programming is today usually isn’t the same as programming tomorrow. IT is improving, changing, trends arise and die, new languages, new platforms are born, better solutions come forth for old problems. We need to keep up with the changes and also constantly improve ourselves. This is not optional, this is crucial.

Below you can find a few tips which will help you walk the line, become a better developer.

 

 

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How to steal a facebook identity

by Ochronus on September 29, 2011

Identity theftSubtitle: A case study on why you should use HTTPS for all sites you have an account on.

So you want to know how to steal someone’s facebook identity. How to impersonate the poor victim. How to post embarrassing status updates, pictures in his/her name. Naughty, aren’t we? Let’s view this as a tech challenge instead, forget the nasty things we could do with it. This howto touches basic online security issues and some networking internals. Prepare for the journey, fasten your seatbelts.

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Easy ruby paralellism with the ‘parallel’ gem

September 27, 2011

Concurrency is a hard topic in programming with many advanced concepts. We love libraries and solutions which help us during our everyday simple tasks. The ‘parallel’ gem is one of these – well, gems -. You can find it at github. The author’s own description:
Run any code in parallel Processes(> use all CPUs) or …

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Be the samurai you used to admire when you were a kid

September 22, 2011
Thumbnail image for Be the samurai you used to admire when you were a kid

Samurais are cool, but why? Is it that they wield sharp swords? No, it’s because they act cool. They act cool-headed, professional. They decide in the fraction of a second and they always get through their ways. They are zen warriors.

Now, I want this behaviour from all of my developers and team leads. Especially …

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Escape the feature hell

July 13, 2011

What is feature hell and how to escape it? Have you ever been on a project that just never seemed to get done because tons of features were planned (and added as the project went)? Well, my friend, then you’ve walked through feature hell. Feature hell is implementing features that will be rarely used, …

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Interactive editing in irb – test ideas like a pro

June 29, 2011

I’m sure you’ve been in the situation you had to test some ideas quickly, but irb itself was not enough because the code was too complicated for a simple run-while-typing scenario, so you’ve created your Nth test.rb and ran ruby test.rb for the gazillionth time. You must have wondered if there’s a better way. …

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Secure password storage – a myth?

April 29, 2011

sony playstation, playstation network, security breach, sony hack
With Sony’s recent fiasco (PSN hacked, user data, including passwords stolen) the old topic of password storage is in spotlight again. Is it really that hard to store passwords securely? Obviously not. Let me show you how a post-stone age developer would solve it and some of the …

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A basic CSS3 reset

April 18, 2011

As a sequel to my HTML5 page structure article I present a basic CSS1/2/3 reset:

* { outline: 0; }
html, body { min-height: 100%; }
body, ul, ol, dl { margin: 0; }
img { border: 0; }
article, aside, audio, footer, header, nav, section, video { display: block }
input::-moz-focus-inner, input::-moz-focus-inner { border : 0px; }
input { …

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A html5 website template starter kit.

April 17, 2011

A html5 website template starter kit.

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<title>My shiny site</title>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<nav>
<ul>
<li>Menu item</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</header>
<section>
<article>
<header>
<h2>Article title</h2>
<p>Posted on <time datetime=”2011-04-15T16:31:24+02:00″>April 15th 2011</time> by <a href=”#”>Writer</a> – <a href=”#comments”>6 comments</a></p>
</header>
<p>Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.</p>
</article>
<article>
<header>
<h2>Article title</h2>
<p>Posted on <time datetime=”2011-04-15T16:31:24+02:00″>April 15th 2011</time> by <a href=”#”>Writer</a> – <a href=”#comments”>6 comments<

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Ruby 1.9 changes, cherry picked

February 4, 2011

In this post I look at some hand-picked changes in ruby 1.9 including new features and deprecations. Of course you can check the full changelog anytime at the main Ruby Language Site.

Ruby 1.9 brought forth some very nice and important changes which have been refined in v1.9.1 and v1.9.2. Naturally upgrades come with a …

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What does the popularity of iPhone and iPad tell us?

January 29, 2011

What do we have to learn from the last years’ extreme popularity of iPhone, iPad and their top applications? Why is the appearance of these devices so important? Do they really mean the end of an era and the beginning of the next one?

To me, they do mean the end of an era: the …

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Why I won’t hire you – a recruiter’s (re)view of developer candidates

December 8, 2010

After leading a relatively high number of developer interviews lately I feel like summarizing my experience – the things I look for in the candidates.

I’ve been always doing a 3-round interview:
- round #1: A 1.5 hour long test along with the other candidates. Some easy factual questions, some minimal coding, some SQL and some …

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mod_pagespeed – why so hasty just yet?

November 5, 2010

The net’s been loud with google’s mod_pagespeed lately.

According to the project page:
mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache module that automatically optimizes web pages and resources on them. It does this by rewriting the resources using filters that implement web performance best practices. Webmasters and web developers can use mod_pagespeed to improve the performance of their …

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What is a HTTP HEAD request good for? – Some uses

November 5, 2010

Let’s meet HTTP GET ‘s little brother
According to Wikipedia:
Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request, but without the response body. This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers, without having to transport the entire content.

This means that we have a faster way of checking …

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Drawing the Mandelbrot set in Ruby and Haskell

March 2, 2010

Generating the wonderful Mandelbrot set in Ruby and Haskell – it’s amazing how simple math can give birth to such a sophisticated shape. It’s elegance fits Ruby and Haskell well. Come closer and see the wonders!

I just came across one of my favourite books which I read when I was a kid: ‘The emperor’s …

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On the road to being a better developer

February 25, 2010

Everyone wants to be good in what he’s doing – that’s human nature, that’s how we’re raised. The key is constant improvement without being disappointed by small failures and bumps on the way. In the last 10 years I’ve been working as a developer and I feel I’ve learnt a lot of valuable lessons …

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Functional ruby – a simple example

February 18, 2010

Today I’d like to present the implementation of the quicksort algorithm, starting from a naive imperative solution and improving it for elegance and clarity.

Why quicksort? Well, it’s a quite good sorting algorithm which can be effectively implemented on modern architectures and also very easy to understand, making it a nice test subject. To learn …

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Ruby vs. Haskell – project Euler #25 deathmatch

February 15, 2010

What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits?
This is the quesion I’m answering, comparing the Ruby and the Haskell solutions.

Let’s see the ruby version first, with an imperative approach.

require ‘matrix’

limit = 10**999
FIBONACCI_MATRIX = Matrix,]
def fibonacci(n)
(FIBONACCI_MATRIX**(n-1))
end
i = 1
i+=1 while fibonacci(i) < limit
puts i

Here I am using the …

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Top posts on blog.mostof.it as of 2010.feb.13.

February 14, 2010

* Top 5 trends and technologies in software development

In this ever-changing world of software development it’s extremely important to keep up with current technologies, methodologies and trends.

* Top 5 mac tools for web development

See my recommendations for web development tools on macs

* Ruby blocks and closures 101

Let’s go …

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Top 5 trends and technologies in software development

February 14, 2010

In this ever-changing world of software development it’s extremely important to keep up with current technologies, methodologies and trends. It can easily get out of hand though – simply there’s not enough time for anyone to learn all new stuff, work and live a normal life simultaneously. Selection is thus …

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