Branch Delay Slots are one of the awkward features of RISC architectures. RISC CPUs are pipelined by definition, so while the current instruction is in execution, the following instruction(s) will be in the pipeline already. If there is for example a conditional branch in the instruction stream, the CPU cannot know whether the next instruction is the one following the branch or the instruction at the target location until it has evaluated the branch. This would cause a bubble in the pipeline; therefore some RISC architectures have a branch delay slot: The instruction after the branch will always be executed, no matter whether the branch is taken or not. So in practice, you can put the instruction that would be before the branch right after the branch, if this instruction is independent of the branch instruction, i.e. doesn’t access the same registers. Otherwise, you can fill it with a NOP. Out-of-order architectures can do this reordering at runtime, so there would be no need for a delay slot. Nevertheless, the delay slot is a feature of the architecture, not the implementation.

Test-Driven Development, or TDD, is often quoted as an essential Agile best practice, and so it is. It works wonders on green-fields projects and new code bases where you can start afresh and ensure that all your code is both easily testable and well tested. But what about legacy code? (By legacy code, I mean any code that does not have a comprehensive set of automated tests, so you might be writing legacy code as we speak).

The following is a list of the language features I miss most when programming Java, the list includes descriptions about Closures, Modules, and so on.

Every OOP fan is almost by definition a fan of polymorphism. Lots of otherwise good books (e.g. Fowler's Refactoring) go so far as to say if you use runtime type checks, e.g. Java's "instanceof" operator, then you're probably an evil person who threatens little children with switch statements.

Google exclaims, and everyone gasps and bows before the cloud embracing visionaries. But where's the step back, the deep breath, the wiping away of the 'oh gosh it's Google, it's the future' haze to reveal the problems that lurk beneath the surface? I'm far from being a luddite, I was an internet evangelist 20 years ago and an early adopter of everything from virtual worlds to social networks.

Linux has failed to win either mind share or market share on the desktop. Google’s Chrome OS will do little to change that. Learn why.

"A lot" doesn't mean "good" even there is a lot of something good. You should know when to stop. One of the worst thing I've ever done as a developer is over-designing. I've overdone many other things too, but over-designing is probably the number one.

Some reasons why you should include third party libraries in your repository

Today WebM.ag is speaking with Jeff Croft, Jeff needs little introduction as he is a well known web designer and developer, an author of some top notch web design literature and he also speaks at conferences about web design/development.

Imagine you manage the desktop support function for your company including the help desk. You have three outstanding technical support people, each with seven years of desktop experience in your company, the interpersonal skills of Jay Leno, and the work ethic of a West Virginia coal miner. Plus, you have three more people who are rising stars. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

A story in Sunday’s Financial Times is reporting that Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have been holding preliminary talks to pull News Corp. content from Google, and for Bing to then pay a premium for that content. There’s quite a debate around the web on what such a deal would mean for Google, or Bing, for that matter.

How do you view your defects ?

Depth of field is a creative technique in photography that brings out the focus of a particular matter in the image. Most commonly known as DOF, it is the total distance between the nearest and furthest object that appear reasonably sharp in photography. There are three factors pertaining to the effect of the depth of field – lens focal length, aperture and shooting distance.

Southland Tales, an apocalyptic sci-fi/drama/spoof/political satire written and directed by Richard Kelly, is a movie that all software team leaders and product owners should be aware of. They should carefully study this forgotten piece of recent film history and learn valuable lessons from it. They should do so not because of the great visual effects or the plot, but because of the story of the movie production, its release and utter commercial failure.

I have attended a presentation by Simon Guest from Microsoft on their cloud computing architecture. Although there was no new concept or idea introduced, Simon has provided an excellent summary on the major patterns of doing cloud computing. I have to admit that I am not familiar with Azure and this is my first time hearing a Microsoft cloud computing presentation. I felt Microsoft has explained their Azure platform in a very comprehensible way. I am quite impressed. Simon talked about 5 patterns of Cloud computing. Let me summarize it (and mix-in a lot of my own thoughts) ...

At Sirius we have recently started using and deploying Roundcube in favour of the tried and tested (but very old) Squirrelmail. Impressed by it's beautiful front-end, ease of use and obvious extensibility, Tom Callway spoke to Till Klampaeckel and Thomas Bruederli, two of Roundcube's core developers, to find out more about this exciting project.

Metaphors help others not coming from the software business to better understand what you do and it helps us to reflect upon our work. We think software tailors is an appropiate metaphor for our work.

Architecting a system need a wide knowledge of technologies, COTS, projects, standards....

Learn how to handle rude interviewers in a job interview and why an interviewer might be pushing your buttons on purpose with expert interviewing tips in this free online career related video clip.

Everyone has had an interview that didn't go as well as it should have. Luckily, there are things you can do before, during and after an interview to ensure that your mistakes can be avoided or negated.

I had the chance to take part of a multi people conversation on Google Wave.

I picked this planning versus experience concept up from a Jim Coplien piece on InfoQ a few months ago. The idea was basically this; If you have 20 years experience doing roughly the same work you should acknowledge that the 20 years means you have a lot of your plan pre thought through before you even turn up.

Sometimes you have to take a step down to step up. That’s what Google should’ve done with its open source PC operating system Chrome OS, which the corporation demonstrated Thursday. Instead, Google is positioning Chrome OS against Microsoft with a lightweight OS shipping with netbooks next year. Chrome OS will function as a modified browser

After all open source brought lot of piece