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rcirka

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For web, front-end, or mobile apps (excluding games), I agree math is not necessary. These type of apps rarely uses math, they simply streamline data and present it on the screen. It can't hurt, but it isn't a criteria when I interview developer.

Of course, once you get into back-end systems, data analytics, and algorithms, math becomes much more useful, if not a necessity.

Why Class? 13 years ago

I do agree the "noun" vs "verb" analogy when classes are taught are horrible..actually the way classes are taught in general are just confusing.

Ultimately, classes are about code organization and reuse. Done properly, it leads to a well maintained program. Functional programming...it still needs to be organized somehow, whether you put them in classes or namespaces, the last thing you want is spaghetti code. Now depending in the type of programming, you may need to preserve state, which can be quite challenging in a purely functional environment.

Although it is impressive that an app like this can be created in such few lines of code, I think it is a bad precedent as a programmer to have a goal to write as least as many lines as possible. It leads to hacks and unmaintainable code. I would rather have a method that has 10 lines of code that can be easily understood, then a method with one line of code that is only understood by the creator. That is not to say that one shouldn't focus as code reduction via re-usability, but one should always write code the can be understood by others.

In what ways is RoR superior to asp.net (besides the fact it is not microsoft?) RoR is still it it's relatively infancy, has security issues, is significantly slower, and good luck finding a good IDE. To the author's point, don't just hate, give some specific reasons why one technology is superior or inferior.

Huffington Post - New York City - Full Time - On Site

iOS Developer

About the Huffington Post: The Huffington Post is a Pulitzer Prize-winning source of breaking news, features, and entertainment, as well as a highly engaged community for opinion and conversation. The Huffington Post has 50 million monthly unique visitors (comScore November, 2012) posting more than 8 million comments each month. The site has more than 40,000 bloggers -- from politicians, students and celebrities to academics, parents and policy experts -- who contribute in real-time on the subjects they are most passionate about. The Huffington Post has editions in the UK, Canada, Quebec, France, Spain, and Italy with Japan and more scheduled to launch in the coming months

The Huffington Post is seeking an experienced iOS developer to join our dedicated iOS team. Our apps include Huffington Post, Huffington Post Live, and GPS for the Soul on the iTunes App Store. The qualified candidate must be experienced with Objective-C and should be able to develop a native iOS application through its entire lifecycle. As our apps have been converted to iOS 7, the candidate should have a familiarity with the new features and coding requirements of iOS7.

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/41117/ios-developer-hu...

or email ron.cirka@huffingtonpost.com

How is your diet and exercise? Cut out any sugar and caffeine, avoid high processed foods (especially white bread and soda) and try to exercise at least 30 minutes daily. Do you take vitamin supplements? It is possible you could be vitamin deficient. There are blood test for that. Vitamin B-3 (niacin), vitamin C and vitamin D-3 are especially important.

Assuming those basis are covered, how is your breathing/posture? Programmers especially can develop bad posture because of sitting all day. Make sure you don't slouch when you sit. Here is something to try - when you feel anxiety coming, immediately stand still, straighten your back, slow down your breathing taking normal size breaths (don't deep breath, just breath normally) and clear your mind for 30 seconds.

How is your sleep, do you snore loudly and don't feel rested? You might want to check if you have sleep apnea.

That's all I can think of for now. There are also drugs, both non-prescription and prescription that can help. Personally I'd only use them as a last resort.

AFNetworking 2.0 13 years ago

I've used AFNetworking pre-iOS7 and it's been a godsend. However with the advent on NSURLSession, I don't see the need to have a 3rd party wrapper to do network calls anymore. Although I admire Mattts' efforts, I'm still not convinced using AFNetworking 2.0 is more effective than using NSURLSession directly.

I use firefox mainly for hierarchical vertical tabs (tree style tab plugin). I often have up to 50 tabs open at once, which is unmanageable in ie/chrome. Also session manager is amazing, never have to worry about losing tabs. I also like how firefox loads tabs on demand, unlike chrome which opens them all when you open the browser.

I agree that home ownership is not a good investment. Between mortgage interest, property taxes, home owners insurance, and maintenance, the ROI will be negative. Not to mention most homes barely appreciate beyond inflation. People say that with rent, all your money is going out the window. The same can be said for owning a home.

As others have mentioned, increasing units without increasing infrastructure will only make things worse. NYC is great because of its transportation, subways for intra-city and rail for the suburbs. Even then, NYC isn't perfect. The middle class can't afford to live safety in NYC. It is polarized for the rich-poor. Living in Manhattan is price-prohibitive, $2500+ for a decent one bedroom. The bronx is mostly poor with a high crime-rate. Queens/Brooklyn are polarized too. The middle class need to commute from the suburbs (NJ, upstate NY, long island/CT), with commutes of 1 hour+ each way. Fortunately the rail system can mostly handle it, but it is still a lot of time out of the day.

As a lead developer that is involved in new hires, I can give you my perspective.

We generally don't hire remote workers. If I did consider hiring for a remote position, it would only be for senior developers. It is difficult to mentor a junior developer that works remotely.

As far as wanting to work for a company that values general programming concepts, well, let me just say this. In reality, it can take years to fully master a framework. It's not just programming, but patterns and architecture. Even the quickest learner can not learn these over night. I wouldn't ever hire someone who just knows a little of every language, it comes across as a jack of all trades. I don't look for people that can just hack stuff together, I want someone who is specialized in a technology and can implement specifications on a product quickly and cleanly.

I don't wish to discourage you, there are probably jobs at there that fit your criteria. It depends on your goals. If you want to just have fun, you will have to sacrifice on pay. If you want make good money, you will need to specialize on a specific platform (ie php/mysql or .net/mssql) and know it inside and out.

The solution I use is to not use storyboards. Although storyboards have some nice features, they don't work well in large projects. Merge commits are the big problem. The storyboard diagram can get huge. Also, storyboards don't handle the re-use of view controllers very well. My teams stick with using the traditional viewcontroller per nib model. I have read that some companies, such as google, forbid the use of nibs altogether.

Hacking stuff together from stackoverflow might be faster initially, but later on the product will encounter severe quality issues. Learning the fundamentals and foundations of a technology, combined with experience and architecture knowledge will make a programmer 10x faster while still maintaining quality.

I'm not sure if this was similar to your business model, but there is a site called cinderellawine.com that does daily deals for wines and does pretty well. I had a co-worker that was addicted to it, I don't think he even drank the wine. It does show that there is a market for "mail-order" wine that isn't based on personal connections.

I was just curious. I would hope RoR would be able to handle more than 60 requests per minute. Nowadays I don't bother with manual replicated servers, cloud servers handle a lot of those problems, but I understand everyone has their reasons.

One of the points the author makes, is that static typing improves code maintainability and refactoring. I've used both static and dynamic languages. When I was younger I preferred dynamic typed because they were easier to start with and code, but now that I've grown more experienced and dealt with highly complex projects, I prefer static typed. Being able to debug, maintain, and refactor code is much easier and less risky in static typed languages.

It depends on the scenario. Web services or user interfaces accepting user input should be validated. However, in deeper code, it is better to let the system throw an exception and let the client handle it. Otherwise, how would the client know the method failed? Also, it is easier to debug behavior if a system throws an exception, rather than hiding the error.

Drupal has it purposes, however I wouldn't use it for anything custom. I have a friend that runs a small web site business (mom & pop shop). He makes most of the sites in drupal, his primary customers are very small businesses. In this case drupal is perfect for him, he can have a site up and running in an afternoon with an amazing amount of features. Of course, when he ever calls me to do any custom modification, I cring.

Well, xcode is such a memory hog that an air is impractical. With 4gb of ram, xcode runs so poorly its not worth it. With 8gb or ram, you can BARELY run xcode, don't bother have anything else open. 16gb is optimal.

I agree that MacPro or MB17 are overkill. A smaller macbook pro or mac mini with an external are good. A basic mac mini is most cost effective for only $550, plus $100 for 16gb. When my macbook pro died, I bought a mac mini and I'm very happy with it.

.net and java aren't unpopular because of their compiled nature. They are certainly much more performant and development lifecycle is quicker. The problem is their licensing fees. Python, Ruby, Node, and PHP have no licensing free and deployment costs are negligible. Most developers would agree that PHP is horrible; despite that it is very popular, because it is free.

Once performance becomes an issue, compiled languages become more advantageous. This is why twitter is now on java/scala, and stackoverflow is on .net.

Dynamic languages are certainly less restricting and may be faster to development at the start, but have a major maintenance and debugging cost. I shutter when I think about trying to modify and huge javascript or php codebase. With .net, no big deal.

As a personal preference, I like objective-c, it has the benefits of dynamic and static languages and it very performant. Too bad it is mostly limited to the apple platform.

How many hours did it take you to write the book? From an ROI perspective, if it took you 100 hours to write the book and your rate is $100/hour, you would need to make $10,000 to break even. Of course, if used as a marketing tool to increase your rate, you would get more ROI as an investment in yourself.

What was your motivation in writing the book?

I'm curious why it ends at 103. If the mean score is supposed to be 100, does that mean anyone below that isn't fit for college - half the population?

If you already have some programming experience, it doesn't make much sense to invest time and resources to go back and get a degree. When I'm interviewing, I prefer people that have a CS degree, as they tend to be better programmers. However, if a candidate has the appropriate knowledge and skill for the job, then they'll be hired. My suggestion would be to go pick up some comp sci books and learn some of the fundamentals on your own, it will increase your skill level without having to go through the expense of college, and it will increase your competitiveness.