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.
I've done quite a bit of front-end work and one of the teams I was on built a large graphing application. It required algebra for some of the plotting routines, but nothing too major.
It wasn't until I got into relational databases that I saw you really needed more applied mathematics to be a good database designer. Then you start to read about Dijkstra and Codd and suddenly realize your HTML, CSS, JS world seemed rather small by comparison.
Yeah, and it's REALLY important for graphical programming. Vectors, Matrices, and Quaternions nearly killed me when I started doing work that required it.
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.
This code isn't particularly hard to understand, and that's one of the things I was impressed with about it. If it were more than a demo, it would need comments to explain its cleverer bits, but on the whole, it's pretty cleanly written.
But I disagree that writing short programs for the sake of writing short programs is a bad thing. Sure, you need to recognize that you can't take all of the habits you get from it with you when doing stuff for production, but it can be a good goal when creating prototypes. One big advantage is that it prevents feature creep.
I wrote a library a while back called DelayedOp for wrangling async calls in JS. Originally it was 5 lines of CoffeeScript, and I actually used it in that form for a while. It's much bigger now and full of features to aid in debugging. The key is that by writing it minimally to begin with, I got something I could use and see what features I actually wanted to add. And while I mourn the elegance of those original five lines, I also realize that what it is now is far more useful and reliable.
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.
Rails initial release: 2004
ASP.NET initial release: 2002
I've heard nothing but good things about RubyMine, but few people use it because a good text editor is all you need to work with most dynamic languages. C# is practically unusable without Visual Studio.
MVC released 2007/2008.
WebForms has it's own purpose: RAD development in corporate environment, for vast amount of ex-VB6 devs (or any desktop RAD drag'n'drop tool). It should bring desktop devs to webs, nothing else, and its done great job. Not that I like the result, but you could build forms - heavy apps in no time!
Under the WebForms and MVC is ASP.NET, and anybody could build their own web framework (and server) on top of it! Like today we have NancyFx, 6-7 years ago there was Monorail and some other MVC frameworks - but nobody used that. Because 90% of asp.net devs was exVB6 locked inside some corp building.
Today, with MVC, OWIN and healthy OSS ecosystem, things are different. Even MS is supporting OWIN web middleware, which will in the end allow running web app under win/linux without any change.
Little known fact about Xamarin Studio (MonoDevelop) is that there is a option to enable source analysis which is for some reason off by default. Flipping it on essentially enables resharper mode. Only item missing is auto namespace resolution for references.
Rails is an actual MVC framework, ASP.NET was an over-complicated, leaky, fairly opaque abstraction for web programming. And it took years for MS to then come out with their own MVC framework.
Yes, ASP.NET MVC is ASP.NET, but that neither changes, nor invalidates anything that I said.
a) Rails is an actual MVC framework.
b) ASP.NET was an over-complicated, leaky, fairly opaque abstraction for web programming.
c) It took years for MS to then come out with their own MVC framework.
RoR vs Asp.Net is largely community (and modules) vs tools. Both are important and I am not sure if a combination of the two is even feasible. VS is like crack, it's so good, but at the same time nuget looks like a joke compared to gems. TLDR; nobody is good at everything because different things are optimized for different cases.
Huffington Post - New York City - Full Time - On Site
iOS Developer
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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.
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.
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.
Another essential feature is SSL pinning, which helps prevent against man-in-the-middle attacks and other vulnerabilities. If your app interacts with any sensitive customer information, you would be well-advised to take a look at AFSecurityPolicy: http://cocoadocs.org/docsets/AFNetworking/2.0.0/Classes/AFSe...
I also think serializers will have a dramatic impact on the reusability and composability of business logic across your application in a really elegant way.
I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts as you do networking on iOS 7 with and without AFNetworking. Feel free to reach out over Twitter or email.
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.
Kind of reminds me of the movie "Taking of Pelham 123", where a stunt is created so that someone can profit by shorting the stock market. I wonder who made out on this one.
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.
Of course, once you get into back-end systems, data analytics, and algorithms, math becomes much more useful, if not a necessity.