Teochew Thunder

Five Software Development Takeaways From the COP Saga in 2021
"Passing off WhatsApp anecdotes as fact is the province of clueless Boomers, not an MP."

Functional Terminology
"Basically, the subprocedure would perform whatever operations the programmer put in it, and that would be the end of it. This has all but vanished from the programming landscape."

The Different Categories of Data Analytics
"The descriptive component explores the what, the diagnostic component generally explores the why, and the predictive component explores the what-if. The prescriptive component, however, adds value in the form of analyzing the gathered data to determine what steps could be taken to achieve desired outcomes."

Tech Wizardry in the Beijing Winter Olympics
"In the kitchens, orders were placed via a tablet, and robotic arms tossed vegetables in woks and prepared dishes such as claypot rice, burgers and fries."

Mean, Median and Mode in Python
"Whatever I have presented above is probably not an exact replica of how the NumPy and Statistics libraries perform ther calculations, but it is a pretty close match to how the average human brain would calculate these numbers."

The old-fashioned way to skirt the OCBC Phishing Scam
"Many people have questioned why I, as a software developer, do not engage in the convenience of Internet Banking. After news of the islandwide scams broke, they are no longer questioning."

Reference Review: The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
"Martin's writing style is certainly lively and dramatic, and very often, he does come off as more than a little self-righteous. Ultimately, though, this adds to the experience."

A Year of Learning Data Analytics
"Generally, just in terms of syntax alone, Python gave me almost as much pleasure as Ruby."

Software Review: Power BI
"The screen can sometimes get a little crowded with the sheer amount of controls provided. Half of which I will probably never use."

Using Trello outside of the professional workplace
"This is important because while the overall status of a task remains binary (i.e, completed or not completed), there is a huge difference between 10% of a task having been completed, and, say, 90%."

Elon Musk and the Twitter Takeover
"While I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk, I am a big fan of being able to do whatever I damn well please with my own money."

Reading Books In Modern Technology
"While I acknowledge the use case of e-books - and you may feel free to call me old-fashioned here - there are many instances where I prefer having an actual physical book in hand as opposed to reading it off the screen."

Ten Pieces Of African Wisdom In Software Development
"After all, who can lay claim to all knowledge, past present and future, in the rapidly evolving arena of software development?"

App Review: Bazooka Boy
"The gleeful way that Bazooka Boy approaches violence, is a joy to behold."

Thoughts About HTML5
"I won't claim that it was love at the first sight, but once major browsers started getting their act together, things rapidly began falling into place. "

Different Number Types in Datasets
"Sometimes the data just happens to be a number, but may actually represent something other than an actual numerical value."

Ten Cheap Shots At Internet Explorer
"Suffice to say, my life as a web developer has been improved immeasurably by no longer having to support Internet Explorer."

Is the written component overrated in professional communication?
"Verbal communication is considered transient and informal. No corporation, for instance, would consider a verbal exchange a legally-binding contract."

Film Review: Black Mirror Series One
"Black Mirror is not only creepy little skits about tech, it's also full of very dark humor. Sometimes way dark."

Code indentation reduction using Guard Clauses
"Think of guard clauses as bouncers at a night club guarding against unruly patrons and ejecting them when necessary."

Trail of the Catfish
"There were way too many things about his story that stank. In fact, the entire story stank. It reeked like an open sewer."

Button and Input tags in HTML5
"Their use cases tend to overlap, but these are distinct tags and there are scenarios when one is more suitable than the other."

The Good Old Variable Swap, Redux
"In either case, at some point we are going to end up in a scenario where a division by zero would be attempted. And as we all know, once a division by zero is attempted, an exception occurs."

ONE Pass to rule them all
"I'm not a betting man, but I would wager my last Singapore dollar that the average shmuck ranting on Social Media about the ONE Pass, earns maybe a tenth of that."

Five Unpleasant Things About Working With Front-end Technology
"Mobile technology in the past decade has seen a proliferation of different screen sizes - tablets and phones - in addition to the standard screen sizes."

Joining Tables In SQL
"Joins are incredibly useful when data needs to be assembled. And often, this is necessary to create a coherent and comprehensive data set."

That Sinking Feeling At Twitter
"While Elon Musk probably isn't going to really axe two-thirds of staff (at least, not right away, that would be insane), expecting no layoffs at all is utterly unrealistic, and including this demand undermines the credibility of this letter."

A letter to a younger web developer
"Don't listen to yourself - you're young and stupid and you don't know shit."

Film Review: Black Mirror Series Two
"We have another three stories, all set in a reimagined UK where the prevalence of tech changes lives in the bleakest ways possible."

Film Review: Black Mirror Episode Special: White Christmas
"Overall, the dialogue was superb. It just served as good exposition, with a lot of foreshadowing baked in."

Does Skin Art Affect Your Career Prospects?
"In tech, if you do get that job, it won't be due to a lack of visible tattoos. It will not even be a consideration. No one cares."

INFO

A collection of technical snippets and ruminations on the web industry and tech in general. Much of it is opinion-based, and as such, I fully expect people to disagree.

As with most opinion-based content, your mileage may vary.

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Posts for 2022