Database query optimization is a useful skill

Recently I read an article titled “Quick tip: Improve developer habits by showing time cost of DB queries” by Dan Birken.  He claims that one common reason why websites load slowly are because of unoptimized database queries: Websites can be slow for many reasons, but an overwhelmingly common one is time spent performing database queries. Now database queries are likely a very important part of rendering the webpage – the information to populate a page has to come from somewhere. But sometimes rendering a page is slowed down by either unnecessary queries or improperly optimized queries. I completely agree with his view.  For most Continue Reading

Mac OS X Terminal startup slow?

Tonight, I was finally fed up with my Terminal window taking nearly 10 seconds to show the initial prompt.  I regularly use Terminal to SSH into other computers and to commit and pull code changes in git repositories. The delay was annoying so I looked for help. Luckily, other people on the Internet have noticed the same issue so it wasn’t hard to find a solution. The first one I came across was on this blog post on OSXDaily. Initially, I was a little skeptical of log files having anything to do with the Terminal startup time, but other Google Continue Reading