Revisit and Refactor

Today I revisited some code I'd written about a month ago and reduced the time it takes to run a data loading job from 52 minutes down to sub-10 minutes by replacing a relatively slow API call with a direct call to local code. This is something that was "good enough" until now, but was on my radar as being eligible for improvement. Since I had a new data loading job that would take over 10 hours using the API call, I had to write the new job a better way. Copying this better code back where it could make a difference meant that all of my data loading jobs were now refactored and much faster.

The takeaway here for developers is to periodically revisit your code and refactor it. Find new efficiencies. Examine how your code has been working and consider what you might have learned since the last time you worked on it. You may notice something now that you didn't notice the last time you were in the code.

A small amount of time doing this can pay off in huge improvements.

Facebook Bans Likes for Content

As reported by Gizmodo, Facebook is banning (in 90 days) the practice of requiring a user to like a page in order to see or have access to content.

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app's Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Source: https://developers.facebook.com/policy

Coding like it's 1994

I'd like to see a contest to see who can design the best web site using only HTML 1.0 and no more than 40k in graphics, GIF and JPG only. That's right, what's the best 1994-era web site that someone with today's skills could design, if they were sent back in time.

This should be sponsored by TechCrunch with a suitably cool prize.

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