Sep 29

My links of the week – September 29, 2013

Here are my favorite links of the week. Just as a disclaimer, I would like to point out that although some of the articles may not have been posted this past week, but were just found by me during this week and deemed interesting enough to be included in this list.

  • We start with Shanley’s 10x Engineer, an very interesting read on the mythical highly productive programmer, sometimes also known as a Rockstar programmer, as Scott Hanselman names it. Recommended for every developer. Shanley’s article is more detailed but goes in the same direction as Scott’s. After a hard week, with a lot of programming and really no time to produce even a decent blog post and no advancement on the book review I planned to finish, I found these both rather to the point.
  • Jack Clark’s Google goes back to the future with SQL F1 database, describes in The Register’s own style, some aspects of Google’s F1 system that sports, of all things, a reliable relational scheme, with some extensions. This is the system that supports Google’s bread and butter Adwords platform and the article, although not highly technical, argues that it is part of pattern of “turning back towards SQL”. Although this is probably not entirely true, of course there is a reason for the “resistance” of the RDBMS to whatever new technology that showed up during the last 40 years. Interesting read.
  • Joe Chang’s Automating Performance with ExecStats provides a download link to the latest version of a SQL Server performance tool (look for the updated link in the comments) and explains the additions to this latest version.
  • If you are considering Azure, there are quite a few labs that may be of interest. Microsoft’s Technet Explore Virtual Labs! provides an entry point to such labs, with options ranging from Introduction to Windows Azure SQL Database to Windows Azure Websites and Virtual Machines with ASP.NET and SQL Server. Definitely a link to bookmark.
  • Syed Rafey Hussein’s Challenges and solutions – Architecture of a Modern Web Application is a two article series on common challenges in web application development and solutions for such challenges, that make some interesting reading.
  • Dino Esposito’s Aiming for a Truly Responsive Web Experience starts with the Visual Studio website example, to argue for a truly responsive web experience, as opposed to “simply” responsive web design. With the former, you should get not only a different, optimized, layout, but also a full experience that consider’s the devices capabilities. WURFL, used by Google and Facebook is given as an example of a device capabilities database and API that can be used to build such an experience. Definitely a must read.
  • I am ending this week’s post with a non technical article. Brendan I. Koerner’s Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code addresses the issue of how soon can kids be introduced to programming and the benefits that can result for them, at least in terms of improving their “computational thinking” abilities. A very interesting read.

That’s it for the week. Thanks for reading.

Sep 15

My links of the week – September 15, 2013

big-data

As a way to at least keep me writing, I am starting a links of the week category of post, that I expect to be a weekly staple. Links can cover just about any issue I find interesting, from technology to politics. So, let’s start.

  • My favorite link of the week is Derek Colley’s  Compare Big Data Platforms vs.SQL Server.

    NoSQL is a big word these days, and although there are good reasons to pick a NoSQL platform, it obviously should be done only when that choice is actually the best possible choice for the situation at hand. Derek makes a good presentation of the reasons relational databases are still a great solution, when they fit the bill. Every so often a new type technology is hyped beyond reason and that is surely the case with NoSQL. Derek’s article brings some sense into the discussion and even points out some of the issues in NoSQL technologies that may have a negative impact in the future.

  • Rob Farley’s Not-So-Dirty SQL Hacks presents a couple of interestings hacks for string concatenation in T-SQL.
  • David Kuhsner’s The Geeks in the Front Lines is an interesting account of how hackers are in short supply and are being hired by the US government to shore up cyber defenses.

That’s all for this week. 

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