matan_a

True, but since they sit on AWS, you can just use Amazon RDS with your Heroku app on a small instance and be just fine.

In the simplest simplest terms, it's hosting for your app. But you get a lot of bonuses like add-on services, great deployment and app management, and easy scaling (assuming your app is built to support that).

Since their new infrastructure upgrade, it seems it's easier for them to support more and more language stacks. There also seems to be quite a bit of add-ons you can use.

i like it. I had a similar idea a while back where users can get a dump of their fb/linkedin/twitter details.

As an aside, i figured why not have the ability to download your social graph as well (as much as possible with public profile data)

I think the next step is an api. That way other developers can use your service as an import to their apps.

That is - of course - if that interests you.

Good stuff.

Video really shows how scary that is. Doesn't seem like there is any "flight control software" considering the way it was trying to take off.

Still, pretty impressive considering his junior high education and limited resources.

This is somewhat misleading because it makes the false impression that these frameworks are mutually exclusive.

PhoneGap, for example, could be combined with Sencha Touch to get native functionality.

you are definitely right about that

Interesting article and it does go a good job of explaining these basic concepts.

But...

There is a huge difference between understanding something and knowing how to implement that knowledge properly in the real world. The former is a building block for the latter, but just the understanding of what pointers are or recursion is doesn't dictate someone's ability to use them properly or efficiently.

I've been using neo4j for a while now for a new project and i'm very impressed so far - especially if you have typical graph problems to solve (social networks?). I especially like the fact that it's ACID compliant and has an embedded lucene search to solve non-traversal type queries. Good for them that they raised some cash to further develop their product.

Their beta module on Heroku is another win win for me :)

Amazon seems to be testing a new homepage design which is a little different. It actually has a drop down menu on the right side which includes "Sign Out" link. It also doesn't have the normal left side department navigation nor the welcome message as stated above. However, it still remembers you.

It seems like they are gathering statistics on this new format as I couldn't get back to it after signing out.

Decent high level points (with a lot of room to add specifics).

First thing is that your data design has a huge impact on everything your applications do, so getting that right is critical. I would say these points assume so.

Also I'm not sure i agree with his point that caching your data layer isn't a good idea. Yes, MongoDB has pretty awesome in-memory performance, but having dedicated caching servers have numerous advantages like:

- Allowing you to manipulate the data structures better for use-cases or to cache preprocessed items (that might not require persistence).

- Resources. A memcached box doesn't need the type of hardware a MongoDB box needs so it's easier to increase your global cache size and performance w/o adding new DB servers or dealing with indexing size vs working set size voodoo.

- Specialization. Caches are built and optimized for doing exactly that. Why would you think your DB code can do it better?

- Flexibility. I can control my caching lifecycle independently of how my persisted data changes.

At any rate, i'm enjoying my MongoDB work and it does help a lot for the push button scaling, but unfortunately, whole systems need to scale, not just the DB servers so these suggestions won't solve all your problems.

Wow, very useful. Sure beats hunting for this information. Is this information anecdotal or have you guys actually done the tests in each environment?

It would also be nice to be able to actually select a device + version and then getting a feature set for it. Not a big deal though as this really saves time nonetheless.

I think that most people won't have a problem with any domain registrar as long as the price is decent, they don't cause any problems, and DNS management is sufficient.

I personally use 1and1 for all my domains, but it's just because of the above reasons.

When I feel i need a little more DNS zone magic, i set Amazon Route 53 as the nameservers and configure it there as needed.

I think one of the biggest issues with this whole thing is the time-to-market. Lambdas are planned as part of Java 8. At the moment, that's in about a year from now.

Then consider when you'll actually upgrade your production code to use Java 8...I have a feel that by the time you see some stable lambda code in production (depending on how bleeding-edge you are), it will be quite a while.

Who knows by then how things will be. You might even be coding in Scala or Clojure...

Well, I can understand the convenience of lambdas for the folks who are used to them.

But overall I think that this can be viewed as "just another feature" that wasn't in their list of priorities when they designed java - nor was it widely even popular in the communities that the java language was targeting. Because of that, it probably caused a lot of grief on implementation. Slap on the Design by Committee mentality that is at the root of Java innovation and i'm surprised it was implemented at all.

To me, it seems like a middle-aged guy getting his ear pierced and some ripped jeans to look cool again with the young crowd.

Might be useful for Skype lovers. I personally just set up local numbers for my overseas friends on Jajah and call direct without any hardware.

Interesting post. While I used distributed 2LC using Ehcache many moons ago, I never actually encountered this problem. I guess I was lucky.

Eventually though, I realized that using a caching mechanism tied to the ORM wasn't the best idea for me. Since then I've been using memcached more liberally, but I've also avoided classical ORMs in general...

Great book! I enjoyed it as well.

It provides an excellent middle-ground. It's not as hard-core as Cormen's "Introduction to Algorithms", which might be a good thing for some people (like me). I find that for myself, I can retain more information when i have a real world application to attach it to and this book does a great job providing those.

While at first glace i'd think it competes with Yelp and Angie's List, it does have a different angle. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

Ultimately, word of mouth has a very powerful influence on which service providers people choose - but more likely from people you trust as well.

Having said that, not only is the rating of the service provider important, but also the quality of the relationship of the viewer to the rater.

Most of the time, performance is more a factor of system architecture and choice of algorithms/data structures - and less about the language you're using.

Unless you're doing very CPU intensive computations where every millisecond counts, the difference between most languages won't be that great in the big picture.

I've seen this often as well as a way to build Page Rank.

The higher the Page Rank your page, the more positive influence it has on the Page Rank of the destination site.. but it's more like "bleeding" because it eventually lowers yours.

It might be that your page has a good Page Rank and therefore is of interest to that company.

From what I understand, signing up and creating a startup profile are different tasks. For example, i've already signed up for AL, but have yet to actually create my next startup profile or actively pursue funding. I figured it's a way to take a peek w/o any commitments.

Your point though is well taken though.

I've been through this as well for a very senior role:

Interviewer: "Do you know X?"

Me: "Yes"

Interviewer: "Great, do you know Y?"

Me: "Sure" (starting to get suspicious)

Interviewer: "Nice, how about Z?"

Me: "Aha" (not believing this)

Interviewer: "When can you start?"

....

This is the opposite side of the coin. This quick-fire hiring is scary and detrimental. What would that tell you about the company? :)

thanks, those are great references!

I know that Voxer (http://www.voxer.com) uses it and are happy with it:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/the_rise_and_rise_of...

my guesses:

1. You want to force the user to read the page first. 2. It's not that important

Interesting post! I posted one not long ago saying the opposite. The reactions were staggering and felt the need to update my post to clarify my point.

Regarding your post though, i think that no one is assuming extremes - you can easily manage a few hours a month to do some mad science experiments. You might even surprise yourself with the outcome or renew your passion that made you take up development in the first place.

You also don't always get the full perspective in your day job - even if you work at an amazing place.

Development isn't a music skill. It isn't about repeating a piece over and over to train your mind, motor skills, and dexterity until you can reproduce it perfectly.

Every day people are pouring tons of new and interesting ideas into this discipline and more often than not, they have excellent ideas which can be shared and studied to your benefit. Take advantage of it.