Just read that John Resig is joining Khan Academy. It’s like candy for my programmer eyes!
I can’t wait to see what they can do! I really believe that this project has everything to change the way people learn. 
See Khan Academy
May 03, 2011
Khan academy dream team
November 04, 2010
Application startup times: Silverlight, WPF, Windows Forms
Recently I tried to make a little app to track time. It seemed too slow so I switched to Windows Forms.
After that I did some simple tests to see the application cold startup times of some technologies. Warm startup times are pretty similar.
The setup
- PC1: 3 GB DDR2, regular SATA disk and a Core 2 Quad Q8300 CPU.
- PC2: 1 GB DDR2 (not 100% sure), regular SATA disk and a AMD Sempron 2600+ CPU.
- Used Visual Studio 2010 with .NET 4, Silverlight 4 and .NET 2 (for the winforms version).
- To track time used a regular stopwatch.
- There is no I/O or network, just a label in a window with the text “hello startup world”.
- Every test consisted in launching the Silverlight app, the WPF app and the windows Forms app after a reboot.
- The time of the first application being executed after the reboot is in bold letters.
- There are 12 tests, T1 to T12.
Results
Conclusions
- WPF and Silverlight are really slower than Windows Forms.
- Silverlight looks faster than it is because the window opens and the label only appears after a few seconds.
- A splash screen can improve the perception of speed although in slower PCs it still looks sluggish.
- I can’t find a way to improve the performance even after looking at this: How to speed up WPF programs.
October 24, 2010
All the false starts
every one of us has talent; the great challenge in life is finding an outlet to express it.
“I am reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt sorry for him, too, because, for all his potential, he lacked focus. He had been a history major in college, and a linguistics minor. On graduating, though, he concluded that, as rewarding as these fields had been, he was not really cut out to make a living at them. He decided that what he was really meant to do was study economics. And so, he applied to graduate school, and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin. And, after only a semester, he dropped out of the program.
Not for him. So, history was out; linguistics, out; economics, out. What to do? This was a time of widespread political activism, and Ed became an aide to Senator George McGovern, then running for the presidency on an anti-war platform. He also wrote articles for political journals like the Nation and the New Republic. After some months, Ed realized that politics was not for him, because, in his words, it demanded qualities he did not have, foremost among them common sense. All right, then: history, linguistics, economics, politics, were all out as career choices. What to do? Ed suddenly realized that he was really suited to study mathematics. So he applied to graduate school, and was accepted at Princeton. I met him midway through his first year there--just after he had dropped out of the mathematics department. He realized, he said, that what he was really meant to do was study physics; he applied to the physics department, and was accepted.
I was happy for him. But I lamented all the false starts he had made, and how his career opportunities appeared to be passing him by. Many years later, in 1987, I was reading the New York Times magazine and saw a full-page picture akin to a mug shot, of a thin man with a large head staring out of thick glasses. It was Ed Witten! I was stunned. What was he doing in the Times magazine? Well, he was being profiled as the Einstein of his age, a pioneer of a revolution in physics called "String Theory." Colleagues at Harvard and Princeton, who marvelled at his use of bizarre mathematics to solve physics problems, claimed that his ideas, popularly called a "theory of everything," might at last explain the origins and nature of the cosmos. Ed said modestly of his theories that it was really much easier to solve problems when you analyzed them in at least ten dimensions. Perhaps. Much clearer to me was an observation Ed made that appeared near the end of this article: every one of us has talent; the great challenge in life is finding an outlet to express it. I thought, he has truly earned the right to say that. And I realized that, for all my earlier concerns that he had squandered his time, in fact his entire career path--the ventures in history, linguistics, economics, politics, math, as well as physics--had been rewarding: a time of hard work, self-discovery, and new insight into his potential based on growing experience.”
June 28, 2010
Apple business
Upon the great success with the iPhone/iTouch/iPad, Apple started to control more strictly the content of these devices.
Some of what happened so far:
- Apple bans Flash from iPhone/iTouch/iPad.
- Developers create a way to convert the Flash to Apple code so it can work with the devices.
- Apple bans these converted apps.
- Apple and Google try to buy AdMobs (ads for mobile networks).
- Google outbids Apple.
- Apple creates iAds, competing network to AdMobs.
- Apple bans analytics causing a steep reduction in AdMobs ad buyers.
Apple seems focused on money. Although money is very good for a company it can take away choice given by an open platform. As Vic Gundotra said in the 2010 Google keynote:
part of being open means you are inclusive, rather than exclusive. And you are open to innovation.
The good news is that Apple can still go inclusive.
Further reading:
June 21, 2010
Exclamation warning
Upon booting my PC I always notice an exclamation point in the warning “no hard drive found!”. This warning shows during about 1 second and disappears.
All hard drives are working correctly so the exclamation point makes me think more of the hardware every time I turn on the PC.
May 21, 2010
Learning slowly
Lost Garden has a great article about mixing games and applications. There is a big difference how you learn in a game and in other applications. The following graph shows the skill and experience level of a user. The darker red line shows that the skills of a player evolve gradually through time. In the process the user has fun because he is mastering the application.
The following image shows, in the left, a screen in the beginning of World of Warcraft. And, in the right, a screen from an experienced player also playing World of Warcraft.
It is the same gaming after evolving. The learning is done slowly and the user enjoys getting new skills, that he pays every month to play.
