Super Volatile

In Objectivist-C, there are no exceptions.

Lovely.

Here’s the thing. Apple’s homegrown mapping data has to be great.

Mapping is an essential phone feature. It’s one of those few features that almost everyone with an iPhone uses, and often relies upon. That’s why Apple has to do their own — they need to control essential technology.

On the challenges facing future versions of iOS.

In our initial setup, slow disk performance made CouchDB periodically fail all running queries. Moving to a much faster RAID setup helped, but as load increased, the problems came back. Percona is not breaking a sweat at this load level: our mysqld processes barely touch the CPU, we have hardly any slow queries, the cache is efficient enough that we’re barely doing disk reads, and our write load is a very comfortably small percentage of the capacity of our RAID 10 arrays.

A technical analysis of issues with CouchDB from a real project.

One of the things that I’m passionate about in my role at Microsoft is helping developers ensure that their sites provide an awesome experience in every browser. Yeah, yeah I know it seems odd that a Microsoft evangelist would say this but it’s the honest truth and anyone who’s worked with me before knows that I take great pride in this effort.

Given the fact that for almost a decade Microsoft was trying to kill web platform and even now can't keep up with other browser makers, a job of web standards evangelist there must be a tough one.

Anderson is hinting that Mozilla may pursue anti-trust action against Microsoft in the U.S. and Europe because of the Windows RT restrictions. He writes on the Mozilla blog that Microsoft's action:

"... runs afoul of the EC browser choice commitments and seems to represent the very behavior the [Department of Justice]-Microsoft settlement sought to prohibit."

Given that Microsoft has only the tiniest slice of the tablet market, and Apple dominates, there's no anti-trust implications here. If there were, they should apply to Apple, by banning competing browsers from the dominant tablet operating system, iOS.

Or why we are not going to see Firefox Mobile on iOS.

Unless you're passionate about making it your career, learning to code is not about becoming a great engineer. It's about gaining insight and perspective. I think if your ambition is to found or work at a technology company, there's no substitute to that perspective.

Some valid points in the discussion about the need to learn coding. However, while entrepreneurs and software project managers should understand how it is like to program, it still doesn't explain why Michael Bloomberg has to learn it.

And, there is no standard way to do things. Sure, there are conventions and patterns, but often good developers don’t agree on the right way to build something. How often do you think two plumbers argue over the right way to plumb a bathroom? Almost never!

While on the surface the article poses intriguing questions, it misses out the fact that all software is by nature unique. The only programs worth writing are the ones that have never been written before – anything else can be reused or bought. That's why writing software is still a craft and not an automated production line.

Addressing an audience of senior business leaders at The IoD’s Annual Convention taking place at London’s 02 earlier today, Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, claimed that in today’s crazy world strategy is dead, the big idea is dead, management is dead and marketing, as we know, is also dead.

Surprisingly above observation was not followed by another saying that we can all go home now.

Job Security is a Myth - I’ve only been programming professionally for a few years, but I’ve learned that all jobs are temporary. That cushy job you have that pays for your nice car and mortgage can easily disappear with budget cuts. Those certificates that you’ve been working on for internal promotions probably won’t be valuable at the next company you apply to. You could be laid off with the 25% of your company even if it gets acquired.

Shit happens. Jobs come and go. Why not let shit happen while you’re doing something you love?

Software industry is one of the few where one can be picky about a job and get away with it, so why not use this opportunity?

Zynga’s stock has dropped 38% since the OMGPOP acquisition. Coincidence? I hope not!

Here’s the problem with Zynga. It would be a great business for a group of about 5-10 people. The business model that Zynga has pursued does not lend itself to a publicly-traded, multibillion dollar company. They produce social games. That is not a defensible product. Buying up games as they become hot is not a sustainable strategy. It takes nothing to produce a hot game. You merely need somebody with a computer, a good idea, and the ability to make a game. Making a game is not rocket science. Making matters worse for Zynga is that it does not and never will control the distribution channels.

Zynga is far from going down, though the article states some valid questions about sustainability of its strategy.