pcestrada

Sure you might be able to understand something given enough time and guidance. But to me a super programmer is someone who is able to make that leap and create something novel, useful, and valuable. For example, John Carmack, who many would describe as a super programmer, showed the rest of the game industry what could be done with 2.5D in Doom, and later commodity 3D hardware with Quake. You can certainly review his code since it's open source and understand it, but how many people could have independently done what he did when he did it? Not many I would wager.

Rules of engagement may force the use of close-in air combat maneuvering (ACM). During the Vietnam War, the US had more advanced, long range missiles but political considerations forced the pilots to visually identify targets before firing.

Also, against a technically sophisticated adversary such as the Russians or Chinese, the initial exchange of beyond visual range (BVR) missiles will most likely leave a number of aircraft alive. The Russian have the PAK FA stealth fighter in development and the Chinese J-37 stealth fighter had it's maiden flight last year. Stealth technology only makes it more likely that more aircraft survive the first volley. At typical combined closure speeds, there will be only one BVR exchange before ACM begins.

It's also very dangerous to be flying around the battlefield with your radar turned on as everyone else will immediately detect it and mark you as a target as you broadcast your range, speed, and bearing to the world. Typically target acquisition is by other means, such as AWACs aircraft or ground control that guides you into a high Probability Kill (PK) position.

RIM will become another case study MBA students read about when discussing the Innovator's Dilemma.

Sounds like Adobe finally figured out how to monetize Flash. Too bad it's at the expense of their most important resources, their developers.

14. An interesting and challenging problem to work on. I can have all the above but if the task at hand is the equivalent of shoveling dirt, I will procrastinate the day away in my fancy chair, clicking my fancy mouse, surfing the web on my triple 30" setup.

I find that I tend to have at least two files open side by side when coding. Maybe it's an OOP thing, but I rarely focus on just one file. Even when coding web stuff, I'll hop between HTML, an associated CSS file, and a separate javascript file all open at the same time so that I can see the interrelationships. I find the cost of context-switching between files too high when I work on a laptop with only enough screen real estate to open 1 file comfortably.

10

With two toddlers around, a case is a must with my iPhone.

Is there a paper book version? Didn't see it on amazon.

I'm stunned... I've already signed up for ML, was thinking crypto, and now this? Some people dream of winning the lottery, I would be happy for a 6 month sabbatical from my full time job to immerse myself in these classes. I've currently taking the AI class and a enjoy it immensely. I feel the my 'bag of programming tools' has grown exponentially with all the stuff I'm learning.

I spent the last 3 years developing complex data visualization apps. We had strict constraints as to what kind of browsers we could expect(think government agencies) hence our use of Flash/Flex to build the rich apps our customers required. Flex helped us build some really cool stuff quickly, and had a rich ecosystem of tools, resources, and examples to draw upon. I'm really disappointed that Adobe didn't even provide some sort of gradual migration strategy. They basically took the only parachute in the airplane and jumped, yelling, "We are going to make it open source!" on the way out.

I have a difficult conversation waiting for me on Monday with my boss when I explain that our significant code base is now part of a legacy platform that the vendor has jettisoned. The software industry has an interesting gambling component: you bet on which language/technology/platform is going to be popular and hope for the best. Looks like I rolled snake-eyes.

I found this fascinating. I love seeing people develop and demonstrate their craft in a authentic, passionate way. There is a physical component to his work where you use all your senses, such as when he feels the edge of the sharpened knife with his thumb, that you just don't have with programming. To produce a physical artifact that has the right balance, heft, lines, and finish requires the integration of a lot of different skills that when done properly, is deeply satisfying.

I was hoping 'do a loop' did something as well.

I liked this quote: > A bad design with a complete test suite is still a bad design.

Yup, using Google adsense. Took a couple of months to tune it. That's really it. I tried 'seeding' the product by mentioning it photo forums and the like but it wasn't worth the time.

$300-$500/month for a Windows desktop application. I wrote it to help out my mother-in-law since she found Photoshop too complicated to do what she wanted: placing text on pictures. Turned out to be a great learning experience on how to sell things online. See it here: http://www.pmesoftware.com

The Russian Ka-50 Black Shark attack helicopter has an ejection seat for the pilot. According to Wikipedia, the rotor blades and canopy are blown away by explosive charges before the ejection seat is triggered.

Nice hardware. But only a higher resolution Retina display will get me to trade in my current iPad.

From wikipedia: In computer graphics it [bubblesort] is popular for its capability to detect a very small error (like swap of just two elements) in almost sorted array and fix it in with just linear complexity (2n)

-Make $1000/month in passive income from software sales

-Release another iPhone app

-Healthier eating/exercise habits

Mele Kalikimaka!

I interviewed at a small company my friend worked at (he was highly placed so his reference all but guaranteed the job). Sailed through the interview process (standardized C/C++ programming test - ugh) until I met with the CEO. He asked me what my salary was and I declined, stating that I wanted to hear what salary range they had in mind for the position. The CEO became very angry, claiming that in all his years no one had ever refused to disclose their salary. Interview was ended promptly and I got an email a couple days later saying they couldn't offer me the job.

I talked to my friend about it after and he was very surprised about what happened. Everyone else on the team liked me but the CEO nixed the deal claiming I was difficult. I think you need to be prepared for this kind of reaction if you choose to not disclose your salary. Though in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't end up taking the job. My friend left after a year after butting heads too often with the CEO.

This book, "Hello World: Computer Programming for kids and adults" http://www.manning.com/sande/ might be a good place to start once your child is older. It's written by a father and son and documents his son's foray into programming using Python. I believe his son was 10 at the time.

Personally, my parents got me an Intellivision at the age of 6 and I played it every day. By around 4th grade, I wanted to start writing my own games so they got me a Commodore 64 and a couple of books with game listings in Basic and I started having more fun writing games than playing them.

Some of my best ideas come to me when I am in the shower. The last thing I would do is to reduce that precious thinking time to gain 5 extra minutes in the morning.

I'd love the AI book. My undergrad didn't cover any AI topics and so I've been looking forward to spending some time with this book to get a deep understanding of the subject matter. Skynet is my inspiration :) I'm in Boston and happy to cover shipping.

Quite true. Notch has the potential to build his own 'Valve' or 'Bungie'.

Library?

And the next step is to finish what you start, no matter what. Andre LaMothe, founder of xgamestation, a video game development kit company, and author numerous programming books including "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", describes how he motivates himself. I've always found this quote inspirational when I lose steam on a project:

"Hmm, that's a hard question. I guess that the best answer is that by the time you are old enough to understand that you are NOT going to be a rock start or a unique, beautiful snowflake, it will be too late. Lack of motivation fundamentally comes from fear -- you are afraid to do things since you don't think you can do them internally -- which is 99% true.

However, the good news is that if you REALLY try to do anything, there is nothing that you can't do within reason of course. So my suggestion is simple and basically how I start anyone I mentor -- start with ANYTHING that you want to do, something small. Then start it, work on it everything single day until its done, I don't care if you are sick, haev to work, goto school, your girlfriend wants to do something, whatever, just work on it everyday -- at some point you will get to a point where you find your own mental limits, this is usually the point where every single person quits and then sells themselves the bullshit concept, "I could finish it if I wanted"-- this is crap, the fact is THEY can't finish it, but this is just the moment of transformation -- now, here is where you are going to triple your efforts, read whatever you need to read, and finish it, no matter what -- And if you don't think this advice is true I have heard it personally from every single iconic computer person on the planet -- the key to success is so simple -- just finish everything.

You will never become motivated, until you don't need to become motivated then you will be motivated, hard to explain, but that's the way it works --

Additional, arguement -- what are you doing anyway? If you aren't 10x smarter than everyone now, how will you compete in 10-20 years? Imagine the math, physics, computer science, nanotech, biotech, etc. that will be common then -- thus, you better get crackin! There is so much work to be done and no time to do it -- if you are less than 40 and aren't working at least 15-18 hours a day you are not working enough, you simply can't compete with the best in the world unless you are willing to throttle it that much --

NeCroN.TTL "

Can anyone discern what tools he was using? I know the IDE was Eclipse. And Paint.net for the artowrk. He had something really cool for the sound effects, but I couldn't tell what it was. It's a fun little game with some neat ideas: http://www.mojang.com/compo/metagun/

If the problem is one of performance, then each generation of mobile phone should close the gap on reaching an acceptable level of performance for the Flash player. Moore's law may be Adobe's friend in this case.