Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
Last January I decided it was time for me to get back to winter sports. This time I was better prepared then the last and I went with some professionals. There is one thing anyone who ever went snowboarding will tell you. You will fall. It won't be a graceful fall. You will fall on your ass and it will hurt.
When I say I am a gamer, you will probably imagine I have a pimped out PC with the latest graphic cards and liquid cooling system. The game I'll play will be a first person shooter on a large monitor. Let me not forget the headphones, microphones and high speed Internet. If not a PC then probably the latest console. It doesn't matter, at the end of the day it is the cliché you see in Hollywood movies.
What kind of work are you doing. Are you doing exactly what you are told? Are you making a copy of your boss's work? Copies don't sell higher than the original. If you are making a copy, you will be paid accordingly.
If an arsenal of computers put a man on the moon in the 60s, today the USB stick dangling on your key chain could make miracles. Of course not all computers are designed to do something as great. You may be using your old PC, that some have claimed to be dead, to do mundane tasks like surfing the web or checking your email. This same computer, that first of all belongs to you, second is consistently connected to the Internet, third is relatively fast speed, can do much more than just allow you to check your email. I would like to introduce the PC 2.0 no different then the previous PC, simply re-branded for marketing purposes.
Every once in a while I find a few tricks that make me more productive. I post them right here on the blog. Productivity is relative however. What is a productive day? Sometimes I go to work and spend the whole day working without checking Youtube, reading blogs or news, and I feel productive. But when I get home, I am tired and I sleep until the next day. Then I feel like I have not been productive toward something else.
When I say I have spent a long time workingplaying with code it might seem like a joke for those who have been programmers for 10 or 20 years. My experience is far less but nevertheless it is a long time. The compiler, which could be gcc, the IDE, the browser, or anything that understands code, is the programmer's best friend. You tell it what you want and it does it. Usually followed by satisfaction.
There are those moments where I feel the need to share. Sometimes it is when I do something small like fix a bug, or even smaller like when I first really understood what the value of π (PI) actually refers to. It feels great and when it happens I want to share. Unfortunately when I talk about it, the conversion from thoughts in my head to spoken words is a lossy transaction. I end up being a complete bore.
A while ago, I was trying to find a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests made on my pages. To make development easier, each section of the CSS is in a different file; this way, I know exactly where everything is located when I want to make changes. However, making 10 to 15 request just to get the CSS is too much overhead. It could be much better if I could combine them all into one.
It's easy to be impressed by a programming language and start bashing others. Beginners look for those "hello word" tutorials and seasoned developers read blog post or documentations to learn more about them. The choice may start by looking for a language that offers to do the most with less code. Sometimes benchmarks are used to determine which is the fastest, but it is rarely what makes you take a decision. The winner is almost always the language that looks more like the ones you are familiar with.
Can't let them fire me. These are the words uttered every time an employee doesn't get along with an employer. I've seen it happen many times and the employee always thinks that he has the upper hand.
