Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

I really like this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

I have to say that although by nature, I am more or less on the western parents side, I finally learned and am convinced on the conclusion:

"Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away."

Pushy is not necessarily a bad thing sometimes, and from my own experience, working hard does pay off and being excellence does provide a huge source of satisfactions, although I do firmly believe there are other satisfactions coming from the process of exploring and finding interests, and be voluntarily motivated upon personal talents.

Java NIO

Here is a few links related to Java NIO:

The most important advantage that NIO introduces is it is non blocking. It uses the modern OS's non blocking feature, thus doesn't need many threads to help overall system utilization. When blocking IO is used, whenever a thread is doing IO, it will be blocked, it cannot be used to for other tasks, thus in such system, multi-threading is necessary to achieve high throughput.
http://blogs.oracle.com/slc/2009/06/javanio_vs_javaio.html

Here is one comparing the performance of different reads

http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/2008/02/java_tip_how_read_files_quickly

Convert tabs to a specified number of spaces

It comes handy to know a few unix commands to quickly convert the tabs in a file to a specified number of spaces. This is pretty useful for developers who need to make sure they are following a non-tab coding style in their source codes.

$ expand -<number_of_spaces> | cat -t -v | tee <destinate_file>

The Math Guy

Surfing from one blog to another, I reached NPR's "The Math Guy". It can be very interesting if you would like to spend some cycles reading math problems.

http://www.stanford.edu/~kdevlin/MathGuy.html

More interesting Devlin's posts can be found at Devlin's Angle.
http://www.maa.org/devlin/

Some interesting Puzzle Questions Posted by Devlin.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4078172

Google

I decided to spend sometime knowing Google more, and here is an entry to keep track of various things at Google:

How to get a job at Google
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/18/38FEjobsgoogle_1.html?s=feature

Google/Amazon/Microsoft all do it pretty much the same way, with a few variations. Everybody’s looking for the same super-awesome programmers, and so you have basically a gauntlet of programmer-led technical interviews. Google’s aptitude tests, advertisements are just it’s way of leting the super-awesome programmers know that Google Wants You!The main difference between places is how exactly they define “super-awesome”. Here’s my take on the companies I know about:1. Google will hire really hardcore theroetical people into pretty applied positions. Raw intelligence seems to be job #1 at google, so they hire people without a solid pratical track record.2. Amazon will hire hardcore hackers, even if they don’t have perfect academic credentials. Stuff like sucess in Open Source project is way up there at Amazon.3. Microsoft will hire people who have decent (but not awesome) coding skills and social skills and give them a Project Manager job. Because they have so many Project Managers, I think that also frees them to hire programmers with even fewer social skills.


http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-06-15-n22.html

http://blog.outer-court.com/

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/05/magazines/fortune/Wanna_work_at_Google.fortune/index.htm

The problem: dynamically adding XML based test cases into a Junit based webapp

The problem:



I have an existing Junit based, web test framework. Test cases can be written in Java. To better handle data driven test automation, I have extract all test information into XML files, and the java is just a wrapping adding a hook from the test cases to the Junit test supports.



Now, I want to take this one step further, and elimate this dependency on the java link, so that new test case development simply involves creating the XML test cases in a text editor and dropping it somewhere in the CLASSPATH/PATH.

Good websites for interview preps

Found a few good websites about interviews, they offer good information on being both a good interviewer and interviewee.

www.vault.com
http://www.techinterviews.com/
http://www.geekinterview.com

Sometimes it helps to read the sections of these sites related to one's own profession even though you may not be looking for jobs everyday. It is a good way sometimes to check if you are still the top candidate and provides you with the motivations to consistently polishing oneself.

Speed Reading

With Stanley coming to my life, time has become mostly precious nowadays. Thus improving efficiency now has its inevitable advantages. I come to realize since I need to spend a lot of reading/learning, it'd be much better if my reading speed and comprehension improve.

Thanks for Google, I find a few articles about speed reading which pretty much gave very similar information as for some basic tips on improving reading comprehension.

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/learn/suggest.html

And here is a pretty interesting website about speed reading.
http://www.ababasoft.com/speedreading/

Enjoy Speed Reading!

Few Good Articles about Testing and Requirements

Found a few articles on www.cio.com. Some of the articles look pretty interesting and intelligent.

http://www.cio.com/archive/111505/testing.html?page=1
http://www.cio.com/archive/111505/require.html