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Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:57 AM

Is Performance a "functional" requirement?

We had an internal thread on this yesterday, maybe I was a little too glib but here is what I had to say about the topic [edited so it can be read standalone] The original question, “Is performance a functional requirement” is highly unexciting for me.
Posted by ricom | 3 Comments
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Friday, August 15, 2008 11:42 AM

Celebrating Twenty with a Pint

No it isn't what you think. :) Today is my 20th anniversary at Microsoft. Wow. 20 years of doing anything is pretty amazing and 20 of this definitely counts as amazing, to me anyway. It's been a lot of fun. I got to celebrate in a very special way. You
Posted by ricom | 4 Comments
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Monday, June 30, 2008 10:57 AM

My Last Words to Bill

We had a little internal yearbook thing you could sign for Bill last week.  This is what I wrote:   Dear Bill, In not too many weeks now I’ll be celebrating my 20th anniversary at Microsoft.  I think I owe you some thanks for these
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Monday, May 05, 2008 10:11 AM

Cycles in Computer Science, or Am I Ancient?

It's been a strange couple of weeks.  No, really. It all started when a friend of mine, let's call him "Desi", posted a question asking about what he should do in his last few months of college.  A reasonable enough question and I
Posted by ricom | 12 Comments
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Friday, February 29, 2008 5:51 AM

Sara Ford goes retro

In honor of the leap year, she's posted a couple of articles I wrote back around 1993 describing things you could do in VC++ 2.0. Oddly enough most of them are still applicable. Cheers Sara
Posted by ricom | 0 Comments
Saturday, October 20, 2007 6:05 PM

Programs to Run

I haven't posted anything "fun" for a while. Here's another of my little parody songs. Based on Sheryl Crow's " Soak Up The Sun " Programs to Run My friend the program lead Can't even code in VB I can't afford his bloat So I'm stuck here fixing his tree
Posted by ricom | 3 Comments
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Thursday, July 12, 2007 1:23 PM

News About Me

From time to time things get shuffled around here and I was involved in a recent shuffle that has changed my job yet again. I’ve been working directly on performance in one capacity or another for nearly 5 years now but a few weeks ago I was asked to
Posted by ricom | 38 Comments
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007 2:23 PM

Partly sunny, chance of showers, bring an umbrella

Everyone knows that my 10 rules of performance are measure, measure, measure... etc. 10 times :) OK, well, if you didn't know, now you do. But does that mean that every time you tell someone about performance problems and/or risks that you should be doing
Posted by ricom | 5 Comments
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Friday, April 06, 2007 9:50 AM

Everything I ever needed to know about programming I learned in Gamergarten

Don't block the user from moving her ship while she fires her laser at the space aliens Don't redraw more of the screen than you have to when the aliens move Make sure the sounds start right away when the buttons are pushed It's better to not have a bonus
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Friday, January 19, 2007 10:04 AM

Good Advice Scorned

I thought it might be interesting to start a discussion about what is possibly the number one frustration of the performance architect: What do you do when they won't listen to you ? I'm sure you've all faced this, you lay out the situation, you show
Posted by ricom | 5 Comments
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Friday, January 12, 2007 12:38 PM

Five Things About Me

I guess it's fate: I was blog tagged by both Jeff Beehler and J.D. Meier within hours of one another. So here are my five things you probably didn't know about me (but some of you do). I got my first professional programming job (I was 15 years old) at
Posted by ricom | 3 Comments
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Tuesday, August 15, 2006 7:18 AM

My 18th anniversary at MS

Today marks 18 years for me at Microsoft. In a little twist of fate, I'll be presenting at our Gamefest conference which is kind of fitting because I got my start programming games for the PET 2001 in Microsoft BASIC (before it was Visual) and 6502 assembly
Posted by ricom | 3 Comments
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Friday, July 28, 2006 10:00 AM

Rico's thought for today

I've said this before but I like it so much I thought I'd post it for posterity :) "Never use the advice of some loudmouth perf expert like me when you could do a nice solid measurement instead." Maybe I'll get it as a tattoo :)
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:46 PM

Glass Houses

In his article Glass houses are great places to throw stones Raymond writes in part: Whenever I write an article explaining that programs should avoid doing X, I can confidently rely on a comment saying, " Well, Microsoft Product Q does this !" as if
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Thursday, March 02, 2006 12:34 PM

I guess he's worth reading now :)

My long time friend and colleague Jack Gudenkauf has joined the CLR as an architect http://blogs.msdn.com/jackg/archive/2006/02/06/526217.aspx I know Jack is expecting me to tell you all what a big loser I think he is but I'll surprise him by not doing
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