Monday, March 16, 2015

Work Smart AND Hard!


The old adage, "Work Smarter, Not Harder!" has become a staple in the way people go about work of any kind.

My advice: "Work Smart AND Hard!". 


The problem with the options "working hard" and "working smart" is that all too often we think we can choose "hard or "smart".

The question is, why aren't we doing both?

Both should be approached as a way to find success because both are essential, and it's time to stop treating them as if they were mutually exclusive.




Working excessively long hours? This may not be helpful because 6 hours , when the work is efficient, can be just as productive as an 8 hours and objectives will be achieved. Working hard? This is different! You do not come across success just by hoping for it! To achieve true success, you need work hard to reach your fullest potential.


Hard-working people are not workaholics!


Many people confuse hard-working people with workaholics.

Workaholism means that someone value work over any other activity, even when it negatively affects him. On the other hand, there are many people who work hard, but still enjoy others activities when they have free time.

How to Work Smarter? There are a few key things that can help people to do this:


- Understand your strengths and weaknesses - this is my golden rule.

- Make the best of resources available -  I learned (the hard way) that always you must explore "what’s right there" in front of you.

- Prioritize: This is very important in time management. Each day, identify the tasks that are the most crucial to complete, and do those first. Devote your entire focus to the task at hand. Pay attention to details.

- Learn to say no and take care of yourself.

What do you think? It is important working hard?

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Monday, January 12, 2015

Don't you just love these bright, bold colors?

Bright, bold colors: Google’s Material Design introduces an inspiring and vibrant color palette.

A couple of months ago, Google started rolling out its new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system and one of the most prominent changes in the Lollipop release is a redesigned user interface built around the “Material design”.

Here’s Google’s definition of  Material design:  “a visual language for users that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science”.
Google has left behind the world of skeuomorphic design and the result is something that looks more eye-catching.


Let's see some colors:

Amber (#FFC107)

#FFF8E1
#FFECB3
#FFE082
#FFD54F
#FFCA28
#FFC107
#FFB300
#FFA000
#FF8F00
#FF6F00
#FFE57F
#FFD740
#FFC400
#FFAB00

Saturday, January 10, 2015

There are good times for you if you have these skills!

Statistical Analysis and Data Mining? Middleware and Integration Software? There are good times for you if you have these skills!


 "Statistical analysis and data mining" topped LinkedIn's list of the 25 Hottest Skills That Got People Hired in 2014,  moving up from number 5 in 2013.

"We live in an increasingly data driven world, and businesses are aggressively hiring experts in data storage, retrieval, and analysis. Across the globe, statistics and data analysis skills were highly valued"  Sohan Murthy, research consultant at LinkedIn, wrote in a blog post.

Glassdoor reports a median salary of $118,709 for a data scientist and  $64,537 for a programmer.

If you have any involvement in data analytics and want to develop your career, is worth learning some of the most commonly used tools:

- SQL/RDB;
- R and Python;
- Excel;
- SAS and SPSS;
-Hadoop.

There are lots of roles that involve working with analytics and big data, but some of the most common titles are:

- Data Analyst - Common skills that you will be asked for include SQL, R, SAS and Excel, and often Hadoop.
- Data Scientist - As well as the analytics skills that an analyst will be expected to have, data scientists will be expected to have programming skills (Java or Python).

In 2014, for the second year, O'Reilly Media conducted an anonymous survey to expose the tools successful data analysts and engineers use, and how those tool choices might relate to their salary.

By a considerable margin, the most broadly-used software was SQL , which was selected by 71% of respondents.

R and Python were the next most widely-used tools — they were selected by 43% and 41% of survey-takers, respectively.

"R and Python are likely popular because they are easily accessible and effective open source tools for analysis",the authors of the report note.

Moreover, statistics has been working on collecting and analyzing data even before computers existed. Whatever technological revolutions that may occur, statistics will remain relevant because if we can measure something, we improve it.

Related skills were also ranked highly:
6. Business Intelligence
10. Perl/Python/Ruby
11. Data Engineering and Data Warehousing

The rest of the LinkedIn's list was populated by tech skills.

Hottest Skills of 2014 on LinkedIn:
1. Statistical analysis and data mining
2. Middleware and integration software
3. Storage systems and management
4. Network and information security
5. SEO/SEM Marketing
6. Business intelligence
7. Mobile development
8. Web architecture and development framework
9. Algorithm design
10. Perl/Python/Ruby

Last year, the top 2013 LinkedIn skill was Social Media Marketing, with Statistical Analysis and Data Mining ranked at 5.



Thursday, January 8, 2015

JavaScript is not an “ugly duckling” anymore!

I always find it fascinating to read about trends in the use of programming languages.

Based on a formula assessing Internet searches on languages, the Tiobe Index named JavaScript its Language of the Year for 2014


 “After all these years, JavaScript has finally become TIOBE's language of the year. It was a close finish. Swift and R appeared to be the main candidates for the title but due to a deep fall of Objective-C this month, a lot of other languages took advantage of this and surpassed these two candidates at the last moment.”  Tiobe said.

TIOBE programming index is “a measure of popularity of programming languages, calculated from number of search engine results for queries containing the name of the language” (TIOBE Programming Community Index Definition"). TIOBE takes into account only Turing complete languages, so some popular languages like HTML or SQL are not present in ranking.
JavaScript has won the award because it had an increase of roughly 1.70 percent of share. "The JavaScript programming language has a long history and is always considered as the 'ugly duckling' from a language design point of view. Nevertheless, JavaScript has become the standard browser language through the years," Tiobe said.



So, is JavaScript the Language of the Future?


Despite being on the 10th ranked programming language in the latest Tiobe Index, JavaScript is the dominant programming language choice for startups (see the growing use of JavaScript on GitHub in recent years – now is the top language.
JavaScript is one of the preferred ways of developing applications for Windows 8's new UI.
They say being able to use the same language on the front end and the back end makes life easier for development teams.

The PyPL (Popularity of Programming Language) index, which analyzes Google searches on language tutorials (the more a specific language tutorial is searched, the more popular the language is assumed to be), named Swift its Language of the Year for 2014.
Swift had a rating of 3 percent for 2014 and ranked ninth on PyPL's index for the month, jumping past two long-established languages: Ruby and Visual Basic.
In the January PyPL index, Java was tops, with a 25.8 percent share, followed by PHP (12.4 percent), Python (11.8 percent), C# (9.9 percent), and C++ (8.7 percent).
Top 10 were C (8.2 percent), JavaScript (7.4 percent), Objective-C (6.7 percent), Swift (3.1 percent), Ruby (2.7 percent), and Visual Basic (2.1 percent).
Source: https://sites.google.com/site/pydatalog/pypl/PyPL-PopularitY-of-Programming-Language





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