kchodorow

Encouraging Female Programmers, Even the Redheads

On my last post, someone named Bob didn’t like that I’d said: “NYU did not have any sort of club for women interested in CS.” Did they have a general CS club? If so, they had a club for women interested in CS. Having special clubs just for women (or just for men) hurts womenContinue reading “Encouraging Female Programmers, Even the Redheads”

How to Succeed in CS Without Really Trying

When I was in college, I was a pretty mediocre student. I knew that my grades weren’t going to get me a great job after graduation, but I had read that doing research with a professor was looked on favorably. I wasn’t particularly interested in research, but it was the lead I had. I wentContinue reading “How to Succeed in CS Without Really Trying”

Velocity 2013

I’m going to be signing books at Velocity Conference on Tuesday, October 15. You can find me at the O’Reilly booth from 10:50-11:50. Last time I did a conference signing, O’Reilly had a stack of free books I had written and they just gave them out down the line, although you had to have meContinue reading “Velocity 2013”

Using Visual “APIs”

I’ve worked on a couple of games in my free time now and each time I learn more about how to make the graphics look polished. Assuming that, dammit Jim, you’re a programmer, not an artist, here are some tips: Choose a Theme Come up with the concept of your game: is it going toContinue reading “Using Visual “APIs””

The Professor, the Interviewer, and the Coworker

I once interviewed a guy who was pretty good, but not a definite “yes-hire-him-now,” which was what 10gen was looking for. He was a bit careless and indifferent and I’ve noticed that when someone can’t keep their personality quirks down in an interview, they’re not going to suppress them once they’ve been hired. (Which isContinue reading “The Professor, the Interviewer, and the Coworker”

Smart Pointers and Heirloom Underpants

I’ve seen a lot of descriptions of scoped_ptr and unique_ptr, but often they don’t give clear examples of when to use one vs. the other. Hopefully this will clear things up. unique_ptr is like an heirloom ring: you might purchase it, have it all your life, and end up being buried with it. For example,Continue reading “Smart Pointers and Heirloom Underpants”

The Rise of Big Data

I was helping a MongoDB user with sharding one time. His chunks weren’t splitting and I was trying to diagnose the issue. His shard key looked reasonable, he didn’t have any errors in his log, and manually splitting the chunks worked. Finally, I looked at how much data he was storing: only a few MBContinue reading “The Rise of Big Data”

Upcoming Hackathons

A couple of interesting hackathons are coming up: October 4-7th: Ludum Dare October Challenge – The challenge is to monetize a game. Win the challenge by earning $1. You can monetize a game you’ve already made (or make a new one). October 11-12th: Tizen Hack, an in-person jam in NYC for making an app forContinue reading “Upcoming Hackathons”

Edutainment

Bjarne Stroustrup gave a talk on C++ 14 and beyond at Google a few weeks ago. The part I remember best was: If you got Microsoft, Apple, and Google together in a room to discuss how to implement C++, that would be collusion and illegal. But if Microsoft, Apple, and Google are on a standardsContinue reading “Edutainment”

Ludum Dare

This weekend, I participated in Ludum Dare, a game programming competition where you make a game in 48 hours. Here’s the final result: And the source, including all images and music: https://github.com/kchodorow/ld27. Incidentally, it worked out to 48 commits over 48 hours. If you’re registered, please try it and rate my game. All in all,Continue reading “Ludum Dare”