Learning how to write performant code is hard. Here are a few simple laws that I hope will convey the core of the matter. I’m calling them…

I’m officially making up these new words, because they correspond to activities that I do on a regular basis and that I need to convey to my students. I hope that by giving these concepts their very own words, they will lose the threatening overtone that these remarks usually come with — because students will […]

One of the most brutal things to adapt in life after college is the sheer amount of feedback, criticism and rejection that come with real life. This happens in just about any direction one decides to go: graduate school, industry, public service or self-employment. It may not feel that way for students, but school is […]

In a very large DB, very small details in indexing and querying make the difference between smooth sailing and catastrophe. [This post was inspired by conversations I had with students in the workshop I’m attending on Mining Software Repositories. It has been updated a few times.]

It’s the beginning of a new academic year. With it, there comes  a new wave of inquiries about applying to UCI/ICS graduate programs and joining my research group. I’ve seen these waves every year for the past 9 years. The vast majority of these inquiries don’t pass my mental spam filter; a small percentage does; […]

It’s Commencement time! So I thought I’d compile a list of 1010 10000 things I believe all ICS students should have done (by  themselves) by the time they get their diplomas. With luck, students have come across some of these in courses. Most likely, that won’t happen, so students need to make time for extra-curricular […]